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THE HAPPY ISLES 


BOOKS BY BASIL KING 


The Happy Isles 
The Dust Flower 
The Thread of Flame 
The City of Comrades 
Abraham's Bosom 
The Empty Sack 
Going West 

The Side of the Angels 


Harper & Brothers 
Publishers 






“they'll SAY I STOLE HIM. IT’LL BE TWENTY YEARS FOR ME" 









THE 


HAPPY ISLES 

By BASIL KING' ; 

Author of 

“the empty sack,” “the inner shrine,” 
“the dust flower,” etc. 


/ 


With Illustrations 


by 


JOHN ALONZO WILLIAMS 


/ 



Publishers 

Harper Brothers 

New York and London 

MCM XXIII 





THE HAPPY ISLES 


J 


Copyright, 1923 
By Harper & Brothers 
Printed in the U. S. A. 

First Edition 

K-X 



©C1A7G0825V 

NOV -9 '23' 


/Vi 





ILLUSTRATIONS 


“They’ll Say I Stole Him. It ’ll Be Twenty 

Years for Me. Frontispiece 


“That’s a Terr’ble Big Wad for a Boy Like You 

to Wear”. Facing p. 158 

“Get Up, I Tell You” ...... ., “ 298 


Mrs. Ansley Took Him as an Affliction 


362 






THE HAPPY ISLES 







The Happy Isles 


Many a green isle needs must be 
In the deep wide sea of misery, 

Or the mariner, worn and wan, 

Never thus could voyage on, 

Day and night, and night and day. . . . 


—Shelley. 


I 



T eight months of age his only experience of 


life had been one of well-being. He was fed 
when hungry; he slept when sleepy; he woke when 
he had slept enough. When bored or annoyed or 
uneasy he could cry. If crying brought him atten¬ 
tions it was that much to the good; if the effort was 
thrown away it did no one any harm. Even when 
least fertile of results it was a change from the crow¬ 
ing and gurgling which were all he had to distract 
him when left to his own company. 

Though his mind worked in co-operation with the 
subconscious more than with the conscious, it worked 
actively. In waking minutes there was everything 
to observe and register. 

His intimate needs being met, there were the 
phenomena of light and darkness. He knew not only 
the difference between them, but in a general way 
when to expect the turn of each. He knew that light 
brought certain formalities, chiefly connected with his 


i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


person, and that darkness brought certain others. The 
reasons remained obscure, but the variety was 
pleasing. 

Then there was the room, or rather the spectacular 
surroundings of his universe. The nursery was his 
earth, his atmosphere, his firmament, the ether in 
which his heavenly bodies went rolling away into the 
infinite. And, just as with grown-up people, the 
nearness and distance of Mars or Sirius or Betel- 
gueuse have gone through experimental stages of 
guesswork first and calculation afterwards, so the 
exact location of the wardrobe, the table, or the 
mantelpiece, was a subject for endless wonderment. 
At times they were apparently so close that he would 
put out his hand to touch them from his crib; but 
at once they receded, fixing themselves against the 
light-blue walls, home of a menagerie of birds and 
animals, with something between him and them which 
he was learning to recognize as space. 

There was also motion. Certain things remained 
in place; other things could move. He himself could 
move, but that was so near the fundamental necessities 
as hardly to call for notice. True, there were dis¬ 
coveries even here. The day when he learned that 
once his legs were freed he could lie on his back 
and kick was one of emancipation. In finding that 
he could catch his foot with his hands and put it in 
his mouth he made his first advance in skill. But 
there was motion superior to this. There were beings 
who walked about the room, who entered it and left 
it. Merely to watch their goings and comings sent 
spasms through his feet. 


2 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Little by little he had come to discern in these 
creatures a difference in function and personality. 
Enormous in size, irresistible in strength, they were 
nevertheless his satellites. One of them supplied his 
wants; another worshipped him; the third lifted him 
up, carried him about, tickled him deliciously with 
his mustache or his bushy outstanding eyebrows, and 
otherwise entertained him. For the first his tongue 
essayed the syllables, Na-Na; for the second his lips 
rose and fell with an explosive Ma-Ma; the last sent 
his tongue clicking toward the roof of his mouth 
in the harsher sound of Da-Da; and yet between these 
efforts and the accomplishment there was still some 
lack of correspondence. 

Of his many enthralling interests speech was the 
most magical. In his analysis of life it came to him 
early that these coughings and barkings and grunt- 
ings were meant to express thought. He himself 
had thoughts. What he lacked was the connection 
of the sounds with the ideas, and of this he was 
not unaware. They supposed him a little animal who 
could only eat and sleep, when all the while he was 
listening, recording, distinguishing, defining, corre¬ 
lating the syllable with the thing that was evidently 
meant, so that later he should astonish his circle by 
uttering a word. It was a stimulating game and in 
it his daily progress was not far short of marvelous. 

If the nursery was his universe, his crib was his 
private domain, cushioned and soft, and as spotless 
as an ermine’s nest. It was a joy to wake up in it, 
and equally a joy to go to sleep. Joy, Tenderness, 
and Comfort, were the only elements in life with 

3 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


which he was acquainted. Thriving on them as he 
throve on the carefully prepared formulas of his food, 
he grew in the spirit without obstacles to struggle 
with, as his body grew in the sunlight and the air. 

By the time he had reached the May morning on 
which his story begins he had come to take Comfort, 
Tenderness, and Joy, as life’s essentials. Never 
having known anything else, he had no suspicion that 
anything else would lurk within the possible. The 
ritual that attended his going out was as much a 
matter of course to him as a red carpet to tread on 
is to a queen. He took it for granted that, when 
he had been renewed by bottle and bath, she for whom 
he tried to say Na-Na would be in a flutter of prepara¬ 
tion, while she whose sweet smile forced the Ma-Ma 
to his lips would put a little coat on his back, a little 
cap on his head, little mittens on his hands, and 
smother him with adoration all the time she was 
doing it. 

On this particular morning these things had been 
done. Nestled into a canopied crib on wheels, he was 
ready for the two gigantic ministrants whom he could 
not yet distinguish as the first and second footmen. 
These colossi lifted his vehicle down the steps, to set 
it on the pavement of Fifth Avenue, where for the 
time being dramatic episodes were at an end. The 
town didn’t interest him. Moreover, a filmy cur¬ 
tain, to protect him against flies as well as against 
too much sun, having shut him in from the vastness 
of the scene, he had nothing to do but let himself 
be lulled to his customary slumber. 


4 


II 


'V 


IX/T ISS NASH, the baby carriage in front of her, 
furrowed a way through the traffic of the 
avenue, relatively scant in those days, and reaching 
the safety of the other side passed within the Park. 
She was a trained child’s-nurse, and wore a uniform. 
England being at that time the only source of this 
specialty, examples in New York were limited to the 
heirs-apparent of the noble families. Between a nurse¬ 
maid and a trained child’s-nurse you will notice the 
same distinction as between a lady’s maid and a 
princess’s lady-in-waiting. 

Having entered the Park, Miss Nash stopped the 
carriage to lift the veil protecting her charge. He 
was already beyond the noises and distractions of 
the planet in his rosy, heavenly sleep. Miss Nash 
smiled wistfully, because it was the only way in 
which she could smile at all. A superior woman by 
nature, she clung to that refinement which best ex¬ 
presses itself in something melancholic. Daughter 
of a solicitor’s clerk and niece to a curate, she felt 
her status as a lady most fittingly preserved in an 
atmosphere delicate, subdued, and rather sad. 

And yet when she looked on her little boy asleep 
she was no longer superior, and scarcely so much as 
a lady. She was only a woman enraptured before 

5 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


one of those babies so compact of sweetness, affection, 
and intelligence that they tug at the heartstrings. 
She was on her guard as to loving her children over¬ 
much, since it made it so hard to give them up when 
the minute for doing so arrived; but with this little 
fellow no guard had been effective. Whether he 
crowed, or cried, or kicked, or snuggled in her arms 
to croon with her in baby tunelessness, she found him 
adorable. But when he was asleep, chubby, seraphic, 
so awesomely undefiled, she was sure that his spirit 
had withdrawn from her for a little while to commune 
with the angels. 

“No,” she confessed one day to her friend, Miss 
Etta Messenger, the only other uniformed child’s nurse 
among her acquaintance in New York, “it won’t do. 
I must break myself. I shall have to leave him some 
day. But I do envy the mother who will have him 
always.” 

“It don’t pay you,” Miss Messenger declared, as 
one who has had experience. “Anyone, I always say, 
can hire my services; but my affections remain my 
own. Now this little girl I’m with while I’m in 
New York, I could leave her to-morrow without a 
pang if—but then I’ve got something to leave her 
forr 

“And what does he say to things now?” Miss Nash 
inquired, with selfless interest in her friend’s drama. 

Miss Messenger answered, judicially, “I’ve put it 
to him straight. I’ve told him he must simply fix a 
date to marry me, or give me up. As I know he 
simply won’t give me up—you never knew a fellow 
so wild about a girl as he is about me . . 

6 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The fortnight which had intervened between that 
conversation and the morning when our little boy’s 
story opens had given time for Miss Messenger’s 
affairs to take another turn. In the hope of learning 
the details of this turn Miss Nash sought a corner 
of the Park, not much frequented by nursemaids, 
where she and Miss Messenger often met, but Etta 
was not there. Drawing the carriage within the 
shade of a miniature grove of lilacs in perfumed 
flower, Miss Nash once more lifted the veil, wiped 
the precious mouth, and adjusted the coverlet out¬ 
side which lay the mittened baby hands. Since there 
was no more to be done, she sat down on a con¬ 
venient bench to her reading of Juliet Allingham’s 
Sin. 

In the scene where the lover drowns she became 
so absorbed as not to notice that on a bench on the 
other side of a lilac bush Miss Messenger came and 
installed herself and her baby carriage in the shade 
of a near-by fan-shaped elm, bronze-green in its 
young leafage. Miss Nash looked up only when, her 
emotions having grown so poignant, she could read no 
more. She was drying her eyes when, through the 
branches of the lilac, the flutter of a nurse’s cape 
told her that her friend must have arrived. 

“Why, Etta!” 

On going round the barrier she found herself 
greeted by what she had come to call Etta’s fighting 
eyes. They were fine flashing black eyes, set in a 
face which Miss Nash was further accustomed to 
describe as “high-complexioned.” Miss Messenger 
spoke listlessly, and yet as one who knew her mind. 

7 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I saw you. I thought I wouldn’t interrupt. I 
haven’t very good news.” 

Miss Nash glided to a seat beside her friend, seizing 
both her hands. “Oh, my dear, he hasn’t-?” 

“That’s just what he has.” Etta nodded, drily. 
“Bring your baby round here and I’ll tell you.” 

But Miss Nash couldn’t wait. “He’s all right 
there. He’s sound asleep. I’ll hear him if he stirs. 
Do tell me what’s happened.” 

“Well, he simply says that if that’s the way I feel 
perhaps we’d better call it off.” 

“And are you going to?” 

Etta’s eyes blazed with their black flames. “Call 
it off? Me? Not much, I won’t.” 

“Still if he won’t fix a date . . .” 

“He’ll jolly well fix a date—or meet me in the 
court.” 

“Oh, but, Etta, you wouldn’t . . .” 

“I don’t say I would for choice. There are two 
or three other things I could do, and I think I’ll try 
them first.” 

“What sort of things?” 

In the answer to that question Miss Nash was 
even more absorbed than in Juliet Allingham’s sin. 
Juliet Allingham was after all but a creature of the 
brain; whereas Etta Messenger’s adventures might 
conceivably be her own. It was not merely some one 
else’s love story that held her imagination in thrall; 
it was the possibility that one of these days she, 
Milly Nash, might have a man playing fast and loose 
with her heart’s purest offering. . . . 


8 



Ill 


A NYONE closely watching the strange woman 
would have said that her first care was not to 
seem distraught; but then, no one was closely watch¬ 
ing her. On a rapturous May morning, with the 
lilac scenting the air, and the tulip beds in only 
the passing of their glory, there were so many things 
better worth doing than observing a respectably 
dressed young woman, probably the wife of an artisan, 
that she went unobserved. As there were at that 
very minute some two or three hundred more or less 
like her also pushing babies in the Park, the eye that 
singled her out for attention would have had more 
than the gift of sight. 

What she did that was noticeable—again had there 
been anyone to notice her-—was to approach first one 
little group and then another, quickly sheering away. 
One would have said that she sheered away from 
some queer motive of strategy. Her movements 
might have been called erratic, not because they were 
aimless, but because she didn’t know or didn’t find 
the object of her search. Even if that were so, 
she neither advanced nor receded, nor drifted hither 
or yon, more like a lost thing than many another 
nursemaid giving her charge the air or killing time. 

There was nothing sinister about her, unless it was 

9 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


sinister to have moments of seeming dazed or of 
muttering to herself. She muttered to herself only 
when sure that there was no one to overhear, and 
with similar self-command she indulged in looking 
dazed only when she knew that no eye could light 
on her. As if aware of abnormality, she schooled 
herself to a semblance of sanity. Otherwise she was 
some thirty years of age, neatly if cheaply clad, and 
too commonplace and unimportant for the most ob¬ 
servant to remember her a second after she had 
passed. 

At sight of a little hooded vehicle, standing un¬ 
guarded where the lilac bushes made a shrine for it, 
she paused. Again, the pause was natural. She 
might have been tired. Pushing a baby carriage in 
a park is always futile work, with futile starts and 
stops and turnings in this direction or in that. If 
she stood to reconnoiter or to make her plans there 
was no power in the land to interfere with her. 

Her further methods were simple. Behind the 
bench on which Miss Nash and Miss Messenger were 
by this time entering on an orgy of romantic con¬ 
fidence there rose a gentle eminence. To the top of 
this hill the strange woman made her way. She made 
it with precautions, sauntering, dawdling, simulat¬ 
ing all the movements of the perfect nurse. When 
two women, wheeling young laddies strapped into 
go-carts, crossed her path she walked slowly till they 
were out of sight. When a park attendant with a 
lawnmower clicked his machine along to cut a distant 
portion of the greensward, she waited till he too 
had disappeared. A few pedestrians were scattered 


io 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


here and there, but so distant as not to count. A few 
riders galloped up or down the bridle-path near Fifth 
Avenue, but these too she could disregard. Except 
for Miss Nash and Miss Messenger, turned towards 
each other, and with their backs to her, she had the 
world to herself. Softly she crept down the hill; 
softly she stole in among the lilacs. 

“My little Gracie! my little Grade!” she kept mut¬ 
tering, but only between closed lips. “My little 
Gracie!” 

“Oh, don’t think, Milly,” Miss Messenger was 
saying, “that I shan’t give him the chance to come 
across honorable. I shall. You say that an action 
for breach doesn’t seem to you delicate, and I don’t 
say but what I shrink from it. But when you’ve a 
trunkful of letters simply burning with passion, 
simply burning with it, what good are they to you if 
you don’t ? . . . And he’s worth fifty thousand dollars 
if he’s worth a penny. Don’t talk to me! A fish¬ 
monger, right in the heart of East Eighty-eighth 
Street, the very best district. ... If I sue for twenty- 
five thousand dollars I’d be pretty sure of getting five 
. . . and with a sympathetic jury, possibly six or 
eight . . . and with all that money I could set up a 
little nursing home in London . . . say in the Port¬ 
land Place neighborhood . . . with a specialty in 
children’s diseases . . . and put you in charge of it 
as matron. You and me together . . .” 

“Oh, but, Etta, I couldn’t leave my little boy, not 
till he’s able to do without me. By that time there 
may be other children for me to take care of, so that 


ii 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


I could keep near him. Pve thought of that. He 
being the first, and his father and mother such a fine 
healthy young couple, with everything to support a 
big family . . .” 

During the minutes which marked his transfer from 
one destiny to another, Miss Nash’s little boy remained 
in the sweet, blest country to which little babies go 
in dreams. When a swift hand raised the veil, lift¬ 
ing him with deft gentleness, he knew nothing of 
what was happening. While the cap was peeled from 
his head and pulled over that of a big, featureless 
rag doll shaped to the outlines of a baby’s limbs, he 
was still on the lap of Miss Nash’s angels. On the 
lap of these angels he stayed during the rest of the 
exchange. The strange woman’s hand was tender. 
Lightly it drew over the little boy’s head the soiled, 
cheap bonnet worn by the big rag doll; lightly it 
laid the little warm body'into its new bed. Where 
he had nestled the big rag doll with his cap on its 
head gave a fair imitation of his form, unless inspected 
closely. By the time the veils were lowered on the 
two little carriages there was nothing for the most 
suspicious eye to wonder at. A respectable woman 
of the humbler classes was trundling her baby back 
to its home. The infant rested quietly. 

The rag doll, too, rested quietly when Miss Nash 
returned to her charge, as Miss Messenger to hers. 
Miss Nash had heard so much within an hour that 
she was not quite mistress of herself. Nothing was 
so rare with her as to neglect the due examination 
of her child, but this time she neglected it. Etta had 
given her so much to think of that for the minute her 


12 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


mind was over-taxed. Because the love theme had 
become involved with the compelling dictates of self- 
interest, which even a sweet creature like Miss Nash 
couldn’t overlook, she laid her hands absently on the 
push-bar, beginning to make her way homeward. 
There was no question as to Etta’s worldly wisdom. 
The choice lay between worldly wisdom and the warm, 
glowing, human thing we call affection. In Milly 
Nash’s experience it was the first time such a choice 
had been put up to her. 

“Don’t talk to me!” Miss Etta pursued, as they 
sauntered along side by side. “I simply love my 
children up to every penny I’m paid for it, not a 
farthing more; and if you’ll take my advice, Milly 
Nash, you’ll follow my example.” 

Miss Nash felt humble, rebuked. Through fear 
of disturbing her little boy, she pushed as gently as 
a zephyr blows. 

“I’m not sure that I could measure it out, not with 
this little fellow.” 

“This little fellow, fiddlesticks! He’s just like any 
other little fellow.” 

“Oh, no, he isn’t. There’s character in babies just 
as there is in grown-up people. This child’s got it 
strong, all sweetness and loveliness, and so much 
sense—you’d never believe it! Why, he knows— 
there’s nothing that he doesn’t know, in his own dear 
little way. I tell you, Etta, that if you had him 
you’d feel just like me.” 

“Just like you and be out of your heart’s job— 
your heart’s job, mind you—as soon as he’s four 
years old, and they want to put him with a French 

13 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


girl to learn French. Oh, I know them, these aristo¬ 
crats! When I get my alimony, or whatever it is, 
I’m simply going to provide for the future, and you'll 
be a goose, Milly Nash, if you simply don’t come 
with me, and do the same.” 

While Miss Nash was shaking her head with her 
gentle perplexed smile, the strange woman was cross¬ 
ing Fifth Avenue. Having accomplished this feat, 
she entered one of the streets running from that 
great thoroughfare toward the East River. Squalor 
being so much the rule in New York, the wealthier 
classes find it hard to pre-empt to themselves more 
than a long thin streak, relatively trim, bearing to 
the general disorder the proportion of a brook to 
the meadow through which it runs. The strange 
woman had left Fifth Avenue but a few hundred 
yards away before she and her baby were swallowed 
up in that kind of human swarm in which individuals 
lose their identity. Afraid of betraying some frenzy 
she knew to be within her by mumbling to herself, she 
kept her lips shut with a fierce, determined tightness. 
She was a little woman, and when you looked at her 
closely you saw that she had once possessed a wild 
dark prettiness. Even now, as she pushed her way 
between uncouth men and women, or screaming chil¬ 
dren at play, her wild dark eyes blazed with sudden 
anger or swam with unshed tears by fits and turns. 

The house at which she stopped was hardly to be 
distinguished from thousands of others in which a 
brief brownstone dignity had fallen, first to the 
boarding-house stage, and then to that of tenements. 
From the top of a flight of brownstone steps a frowzy, 

T4 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


buxom, motherly woman came lumbering down to 
lend a hand with the baby carriage. 

“So you've brought your baby, Mrs. Coburn. Now 
you’ll be able to get settled.” 

The reply came as if it had been learned by rote. 
“Yes, now I’ll be able to get settled. I’ve got her 
crib ready, though all my other things is strewed 
about just as when I moved in. Still, the crib’s ready, 
which is the main thing. She’s a fretful baby by 
nature, so you mustn’t think it funny if you hear her 
cry. Some people thought I’d never raise her, so that 
if you ever hear say that my little girl died . . 

“I’ll know it’s not true,” the buxom woman laughed. 
“She couldn’t die, and you have her here, now could 
she ? Do let me have a peep.” 

By this time they had lifted the carriage over the 
steps and into the little passageway. Seeing that there 
was no help for this inspection, the strange woman 
trembled but resigned herself. The neighbor lifted 
the veil, and peered under it. 

“My, what a love! And she don’t look sick, not 
a little mite.” 

“Not her face, she don’t. Her poor little body’s 
some wasted, but then so long as I’ve got her . . 

“I believe as it’d be too much limewater in her 
milk. She’s bottle-fed, ain’t she ? Well, them bottle- 
fed babies—I’ve had two of ’em out of my five— 
you got to try and try, and ten to one you’ll find as 
it’s that nasty lime-water that upsets ’em.” 

Having unlocked her door, which was on the left 
of the passageway, the strange woman pulled her 
treasure into a room stuffy with closed windows, and 

15 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


dim with drawn blinds. Turning the key behind her, 
she was alone at last. 

She fell on her knees, throwing the veil back with 
a fierceness that almost tore it off. She strained for¬ 
ward. Her breath came in racking, panting sobs. 

“My Grade! my Grade! God didn’t take you! 
God wouldn’t be so mean! I just dreamed it, and 
now I’ve waked up.” 

Suddenly she changed. Drawing backward, she 
put her hands to her brow and pressed them down the 
whole length of her face. Her eyes filled with horror. 
Her face turned sallow. Her lips fell apart. 

“I’ll get twenty years for this. Perhaps it’ll be 
more. I don’t think they hang for it, but it’ll be 
twenty years anyhow, if they find it out.” She sprang 
up, still muttering in broken, only partly articulated 
phrases. “But they’ll never find it out. What’s there 
to find? It’s my baby! My precious only baby!” 
She was on her knees again, dragging herself forward 
by the sides of the little carriage, her eyes strained 
toward the infant face. “My little Grade! I’ve 
missed you all the time you’ve been away. My heart 
was near broke. Now you’ve come back to me. 
You’re mine—mine—mine!” 

He opened his eyes. It was his usual hour for 
waking up. For the first time in his history amaze¬ 
ment gave an expression to his face which it was 
often to wear afterward. Instead of being in his 
own nest, downy, clean, and scentless, he was in a 
humpy little hole unpleasant to his senses. Instead 
of the Na-Na with her tender smile, or the Ma-Ma 
with her love, he saw this terrifying woman’s stormy 

16 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


eyes, rousing the sensation he was later to know as 
fear. Instead of his nursery, spotless and gay, he 
was dumped amid the forlorn disarray of furniture 
that has just been moved into an empty tenement. 
Without getting these impressions in detail, he got 
them at once. He got them not as separate facts, 
but as facts in a single quintessence, distilled and 
distilled again, till no one element can be told from 
any other element, and held to his lips in a poisoned 
draught. 

All he could do was to wail, but he wailed with 
a note of anguish which was new to him. It was 
anguish the more bitter because of the lack of ex¬ 
planation. His only awareness hitherto had been 
that of power. He had been a baby sovereign, obeyed 
without having to command. Now he had been bom 
again as a baby serf, into conditions against which 
his will, imperious in its baby way, would beat in 
vain. Once more, he knew this, not by reasoned 
argument, of course, but by heartbroken instinct. It 
was not merely the distress of the present that was 
in his cry, but dread of the future. There was some¬ 
thing else in the world besides Comfort, Tenderness, 
and Joy, and he had touched it. Without knowing 
what it was he shrank back from the contact and 
sobbed. 

And yet such is the need for love in any young 
thing’s heart, that when the strange woman had lifted 
him up, and cradled him on her bosom, he was partly 
soothed. He was not soothed easily. Though she 
held him closely, and sang to him softly, seated in 
the low rocking-chair in which she had rocked her 

1 7 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


baby-girl, he went on sobbing. He sobbed, not as he 
had sobbed in his old nursery, for the sport or the 
mischief of the thing, but because his inner being 
had been bruised. But his capacity for sobbing wore 
itself out. Little by little the convulsions grew calmer, 
the agony less desperate. Love held him. It was 
not the love of the Ma-Ma or the Na-Na, but it was 
love. It had love’s embrace, love’s lullaby. Arms 
were about him, he was on a breast. The ship¬ 
wrecked sailor may be only on a raft, but he is not 
sinking. Little by little he turned his face into this 
only available refuge. A dangling embroidery 
adorned it, and in his struggle not to go down his 
little hands clutched at that. 


IV 


H IS first conscious recollection was of sitting on a 
high chair drawn up to a table at which he was 
having a meal. He could never recall whether this 
was in Harlem, Hoboken, Brooklyn, Jersey City, or 
the Bronx. Because they moved so often he had little 
more memory of places than he had of clouds. Tene¬ 
ments, streets, and suburbs of New York melted into 
one big sense of squalor. It was not squalor to him 
because he was used to it. It only obscured the 
difference between one dwelling and another, as 
monotony always obscures remembrance. Wherever 
their wanderings carried them, the background was 
the same, crowded, dirty, seething, a breeding place 
rather than a home. 

What marked this occasion was a question he asked 
and the answer he got back. 

“Mudda, id my name Gracie, or id it Tom?” 

The mother spoke sharply, as she whisked about 
the kitchen. “What do you want to know for?” 

The question was difficult. He knew what he 
wanted to know for, and yet it wasn’t easy to explain. 
The nearest he could get to it in language was to say: 
“I’m a little boy, ain’t I?” 

“Yes, you’re a little boy, but you should have been 
a little girl. It was a little girl I wanted.” 

“But you want me, don’t you, mudda?” 

19 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She dropped whatever she was doing to press his 
head fiercely against her side. “Yes, I want you! 
I want you! I want you! ,y 

He remembered this paroxysm of affection not 
because it was special but because it was connected 
with his gropings after his identity. Paroxysms were 
what he lived on. They were of love or of anger or 
of something which frightened him and yet was 
nameless. He thrummed to himself, beating time on 
the table with his spoon, while he worked on to another 
point. 

“Wadn’t there never no Gracie, mudda?” 

She wheeled round from the gas-stove. “For good¬ 
ness’ sake, what’s putting this into your head? Of 
course there was a Gracie. You’re her. You don’t 
suppose I stole you, do you?” 

He ceased his thrumming; he ceased to beat on 
the table with his spoon. The mystery of being grew 
still more baffling. 

“Mudda!” 

“What’s it now?” 

“If I wad Gracie I’d be a little girl, wouldn’t I?” 

She stamped her foot. “Stop it! If you ask me 
another thing I’ll slap you.” 

He stopped it, not because he was afraid of being 
slapped. Accustomed to that he had learned to dis¬ 
count its ferocity. A sharp stinging smart, it passed 
if you grinned and bore it, and grinning and bearing 
had already entered his life as part of its philosophy. 
If for the minute he asked no more questions it was 
in order not to vex his mudda. She was easily 
vexed; she easily lost her self-control; she was easily 

20 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


repentant. It was her repentance that he feared. It 
was so violent, so overwhelming. He loved love; he 
loved caressing; he loved to sit in her lap and sing 
with her; but her tempests of self-reproach alarmed 
him. 

As she washed the dishes or switched about the 
kitchen, he watched her with that trepidation which 
makes the children of the poor sharp-witted. Though 
under five years of age, he was already developing a 
sense of responsibility. You could see it in the gravity 
of a wholly straightforward little face, which had 
the even tan of a healthy fairness, in keeping with his 
crisp ashen hair. He knew when the moment had 
come to clamber down from his perch, and snuggle 
himself against her petticoats. 

“Mudda, sing!” 

“I can’t sing now. Don’t you see I’m busy! Look 
out, or this hot dish-water’ll scald you.” 

Nevertheless, a few minutes later they were settled 
in the rocking chair, he on her knee, with his cheek 
against her shoulder. She was not as ungracious as 
her words would have made her seem, a fact of which 
he was aware. 

“What’ll I sing, Troublesome?” 

“Sing ‘Three Cups of Cold Poison/ ” 

So she sang in a sweet, true voice, the sort of 
childish voice which children love, her little boy join¬ 
ing in with her whenever he knew the words, but with 
only a hit-or-miss venture at the tune. 

“Where have you been dining, Lord Ronald, my son? 

Where have you been dining, my handsome young man?” 

21 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’ve been dining with my true love, mither, make my 
bed soon, 

There’s a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon.” 

“And what did she give you, Lord Ronald, my son? 

And what did she give you, my handsome young man?” 

“Three cups of cold poison, mither, make my bed soon, 

There’s a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon.” 

“What’ll you will to your mither, Lord Ronald, my son? 

What’ll you will to your mither, my handsome young 
man ? 

“My gowd and my silver, mither, make my bed soon, 

There’s a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon.” 

“What’ll you will to your brither, Lord Ronald, my son ? 

What’ll you will to your brither, my handsome young 
man ?” 

“My coach and six horses, mither, make my bed soon, 

There’s a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon.” 

“What’ll you will to your truelove, Lord Ronald, my son? 

What’ll you will to your truelove, my handsome young 
man ?” 

“A rope for to hang her, mither, make my bed soon, 

There’s a pain in my heart, and I fain would lie doon.” 

His next conscious memory was more dramatic. 
He had been playing in the street, in what town he 
could never remember. They had recently moved, 
but they had always recently moved. A month in 
one set of rooms, and his mother was eager to be off. 
Rarely did they ever stay anywhere for more than 
the time of moving in, giving the necessary notice, 
and moving out again. When they stayed long 
enough for him to know a few children he sometimes 
played with them. 


22 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


In this way the thing happened. The boy’s name 
was Frankie Bell, a detail which remained long after 
the larger facts had escaped him. Frankie Bell and 
he had been engaged in scraping the dust and offal 
of the street into neat little piles, with the object of 
building what they called a “dirt-house.” The task 
was engrossing, and to it little Tom Cobum gave 
himself with good will. Suddenly, as each bent over 
his pile, Frankie Bell threw off the observation, 
casually uttered: 

“My mother says your mother’s crazy.” 

Tom Coburn raised himself from his stooping 
posture, standing straight, and looking straight. The 
expression in his dark blue eyes, over which the eye¬ 
brows even now stood out bushily, was of pain, and 
yet of pain that left him the more dauntless. Though 
knowing but vaguely what the word crazy meant, he 
knew it was insulting. 

“She ain’t.” 

Frankie Bell, a stout young man, lifted himself 
slowly. “Yes, she is. My mother says so.” 

“Well, your mudda id a liar.” 

One rush and Frankie Bell lay sprawling with his 
head in the cushioned softness of his own dirt-heap. 
The attack had taken him so much by surprise that 
he went down before he could bellow. Before he 
could bellow his enemy was upon him, filling his 
mouth with the materials collected for architectural 
purposes. Victor in the fray, Tom Coburn ran home¬ 
ward blinded with his tears. 

He found his mother at the stove, stirring some¬ 
thing with a tablespoon. 


23 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Mudda, you’re not crazy, are you?” 

His reply was a blow on the head with the spoon. 
The woman was beside herself. 

“Who said that?” 

Rubbing his head, he told her. 

“Don’t you ever let them say no such thing again. 
If you do I’ll kill you.” She threw back her head, 
her arms outstretched, the spoon in her right hand. 
“God! God! What’ll they say next? They’ll say 
I stole him. It’ll be twenty years for me; it’ll be 
forty; it may be life. I won’t live to begin it. I know 
what’ll end it before they can . . .” 

He was terrified now, terrified as he had never been 
in all his terrifying moments. Throwing himself 
upon her, he clutched at her skirts. 

“Don’t, mudda, don’t! I’m your little boy! You 
didn’t steal me. Don’t cry, mudda! Oh, don’t cry! 
don’t cry!” 

When, in one of her sudden reactions, she sank 
sobbing to the ’floor, he sank with her, petting her, 
coaxing her, wiping away her tears, forcing himself 
to laugh so that she should laugh with him; but a 
few days afterward they moved. 


24 


V 


TV/T UDDA, can I have a book and learn to read?” 

The ambition had been inspired in the street, 
where he had seen a little boy who actually had a book, 
and was spelling out the words. Tom Coburn was 
now nominally six years old, though it was in the 
nature of things that of his age no exact record could 
be kept. His mother had changed his birthday so 
many times that he observed it whenever she said it 
had come round. 

Bursting into the room with his eager question, 
he found her sitting by a window looking out at a 
blank wall. Given her feverish restlessness, the atti¬ 
tude called attention to itself. The apartment was 
poorer and dingier than any they had lived in hitherto, 
while it had not escaped his observation that she was 
living on the ragged edge of her nerves. This made 
him the more sorry for her, and the more loving. 
He put his hand on her shoulder, tenderly. 

“What’s the matter, mudda?” 

It was one of the minutes when a touch made her 
frantic. “Get away!” 

He got away, not through fear, but because she 
pushed him. He didn’t mind that, though the rejec¬ 
tion hurt him inside. He stood in the middle of the 
floor, pity in his young countenance, wondering what 
he could do for her, when she spoke again. 

25 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’ve got hardly any money left. I don’t know 
what to do.” 

It was the first time his attention had been called 
to finance. He knew there was such a thing as money; 
he knew it had purchasing value; but he had not 
known its relation to himself. 

“Why don’t you get money where you got it 
before?” 

“Because I ain’t got a husband to die and leave 
me another five thousand dollars of insurance.” 

“And did you have, mudda?” 

“Of course I had. What did you think?” 

The question voiced his inner difficulty. He had 
not known what to think. Having observed that a 
fundamental social unit was formed of husbands and 
wives, he had also understood that husbands and 
wives could, in the terms which were the last to hang 
over from the lingo of his babyhood, be translated 
into faddas and muddas. They in turn implied chil¬ 
dren. The methods were mysterious, but the unit was 
so composed. The exception to this rule seemed to 
be himself. Though he had a mudda, he could not 
remember ever to have heard of a fadda. He had 
pondered on this deficiency more times than anyone 
suspected. The effort to link himself up with the 
human family was far more important to him now 
than the ways and means of getting cash. Stand¬ 
ing pensive, he peered into the blinding light, or the 
unfathomable darkness, whichever it may be, out of 
which comes human life. 

“Mudda, did Gracie have a fadda?” 

26 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She snapped peevishly, her gaze again turned out¬ 
ward to the stone wall. “Of course she did.” 

He came nearer to his point. “Did I?” 

“I—I suppose so.” 

He approached still nearer. “Did I have the same 
fadda what Gracie had?” 

“No, you hadn’t.” She caught herself up hurriedly, 
rounding on him in one of her fits of wrath. “Yes, 
you had.” 

The inconsistency was evident. “Well, which was 
it, mudda?” 

She jumped to her feet, threateningly. “Now you 
quit! The next thing you’ll be saying is that your 
name is Whitelaw, and that I stole you. Take that, 
you nasty little brat!” 

A smack on the cheek brought the color to his 
face, and the tears to his eyes. “No, I won’t, mudda. 
I won’t say you stole me, or that my name is—” 
oddly enough he had caught it—“or that my name 
is Whitelaw. My name is Tom Coburn, and I’m 
your little boy.” 

Rushing at her in the big outpouring of his love, 
he threw his arms about her and cried against her 
waist. He cried so seldom that his grief drove her 
to one of her paroxysms of repentance. Her self- 
reproaches abating, all she could do to comfort him 
was to promise him a book, and begin to teach him 
to read. 

The book was procured two days later, and by 
a method new to him. Doubtless some other means 
could have been adopted, but the necessity for sparing 
pennies had become imperative. Moreover, she had 

27 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


never willingly looked at print since the clay when she 
opened a paper to find that, without knowing who she 
was, all the forces of the country had been organized 
against her. 

They went out together. After traversing a series 
of streets he had never been in before they stopped 
in front of a little shop, in the window of which 
stationery, ink, wallpaper, rubber bands, and books 
were arranged in artistic confusion. The impression 
on the fancy of a little boy already groping toward 
the treasures of the mind was like that made on the 
tourist in Dresden by the heaped up riches of the 
Grime Gewolbe. 

The geography of the shop was explained to him 
before entering. The stationery counter was on the 
right as soon as you passed the door. The children’s 
books were opposite, on the left. Books forming a 
cheap circulating library were back of that, and op¬ 
posite these, where the shop was dark, were the wall¬ 
papers, in small, tight rolls on shelves. She w r as going 
to inspect wallpapers. The woman in the shop would 
exhibit them. He would remain alone in the front 
part of the shop, and close to the counter with the 
children’s books. He was to keep alert and attentive, 
waiting for a sign which she would give him. When 
she turned round in the dark part of the shop, and 
called out, “Are you all right, darling?” he was to 
understand it as permissible to slip from the counter 
any small work on which he could lay his hands, and 
button it up inside his overcoat. He was to do it 
quickly, keeping his booty out of sight, and above all 

28 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


saying nothing about it. The plan was exciting, with 
a savor of adventure and manly incentive to skill. 

If in the Grime Gewolbe you were told you could 
take anything you pleased you would have some of 
Tom Coburn’s sense of enchantment as he stood by 
the book counter, waiting for the sign. He could see 
his mother dimly. More dimly still he could follow 
the movements of the shop-woman eager for a sale. 
Sample after sample, the wallpapers were unrolled, 
and hung on an easel where their flowers lighted the 
obscurity. Even at a distance he could do justice to 
their beauty, but more captivating than their glories 
were the wonders at his hand. Pages in which chil¬ 
dren and animals disported in colors far beyond those 
of nature were piled in neat little rows, and so tempt¬ 
ing that he ached for the signal. He couldn’t choose; 
there was too much to choose from. He would put 
out his hand without looking, guided by fate. 

“Are you all right, darling?” 

Curiously to the little boy, the question came just 
when he himself could perceive that the shop-woman 
had dived beneath the counter for another example of 
her wares. All the conditions were propitious. No 
one was entering the shop; no one was looking 
through the window. Without knowing the morali¬ 
ties of his act, he understood the need for secrecy. 
He stretched forth his arm. His fingers touched 
paper. In the fraction of a fraction of a second the 
object was within his overcoat, and pressed to his 
pounding heart. 

A few minutes later his mother came smiling and 
chatting down toward the exit, giving her address, 

29 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


which the shop-woman jotted in a note-book. “I 
think it will have to be the pale-green background 
with the roses. The room is darkish, and it would 
light it up. But I’ll decide by to-morrow, and let 
you know. Yes, that’s right. Mrs. F. H. Grover, 
321 Blaisdel Avenue. So much obliged to you. 
Good morning.” 

Having bowed themselves out they went some 
yards up the street before the little boy dared to 
express his new wonderment. 

“Mudda, what did you say you was Mrs. F. H. 
Grover for? And we don’t live on Blaisdel Avenue. 
We live on Orange Street.” 

“You mind your own business. Did you get your 
book? Well, that’s what we went for, isn’t it?” 

The expedition having proved successful, it was 
tried on other planes. Now it was in the line of 
groceries; now in that of hardware; now in that of 
drygoods; now in that of fruit. Needed things could 
be used; useless things could be sold, especially after 
they had moved to distant neighborhoods. While 
the procedure didn’t supply an income, it eked out 
very helpfully such income as remained. 

It furnished, moreover, a motive in life, which was 
what they had lacked hitherto. There was something 
to which to give themselves. It was like devotion to 
an art, or even a religion. They could pursue it for 
its own sake. For her especially this outside interest 
appeased the wild something which wasted her within. 
She grew calmer, more reasonable. She slept and 
ate better. She had fewer fits of frenzy. 

With but faint pangs of misgiving the little boy 

30 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


enjoyed himself. He enjoyed his finesse; he enjoyed 
the pride his mother took in him. In proportion as 
they grew more expert they enlarged their field, often 
reversing their roles. There were times when he 
created the distraction, while she secreted any object 
within reach. They did this the more frequently after 
she became recognized as his superior in selection. 

For a superior in selection the great department 
stores naturally offered the widest field for operation. 
They approached them, however, cautiously, going 
in and out and out and in for a good many days 
before they ventured on anything. When they did 
this at last it was amid the crowding and pushing of 
a bargain day. 

The system evolved had the masterly note of 
simplicity. The little boy carried a satchel, of the 
kind in which school-boys sometimes carry books. 
He stood near his mudda, or farther away, accord¬ 
ing to the dictates of the moment’s strategy. On the 
first occasion he kept close to her, sincerely admiring 
a display of colored silk scarves conspicuously marked 
down to the price at which it was intended, even 
before their importation, that they should be sold. 
Women thronged about the counter, the little boy and 
his mudda having much ado to edge themselves into 
the front to where these products of the loom could 
be handled. 

The picking and choosing done, the mother still 
showed some indecision. 

“I’ll just ask my sister to step over here,” she con¬ 
fided to the saleswoman. “Her judgment is so much 
better than mine. Run over, dear, to your Aunt 

3i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Mary,” she begged of the boy, “and ask her to come 
and speak to me.” Holding the scarf noticeably in 
her hands, she smiled at the saleswoman affably. 
“HI just make room for this lady, who seems to be 
in a hurry.” 

She did not step back; she merely allowed herself 
to be crowded out. From the front row she receded 
to the second, from the second to the third. Keeping 
in sight of the saleswoman, she looked this way and 
that, plainly for Aunt Mary to appear. At times 
she made little dashes, as Aunt Mary seemed to come 
within sight. From these she did not fail to return, 
but on each occasion to a point more distant from 
that of her departure. With sufficient time the poor 
saleswoman, who had fifty other customers to attend 
to, would be likely to forget her, for a few minutes 
if no more. 

The moment seemed to have come. With the scarf 
thrown jauntily over her arm where anyone could 
see it, the mother forced her way amid the crowds 
in search of her little boy. If intercepted she had 
her explanation. He had gone on an errand, and 
had not come back. When she had found him she 
would return and pay for the scarf, or decide not 
to take it. Her story couldn’t help being plausible. 

“Aunt Mary” was a spot agreed upon near one 
of the side doors, and far from the center of interest 
in silk scarves. Agreed upon was also a little bit of 
comedy, for the benefit of possible lookers-on. 

“Oh, my dear, I’ve kept you waiting so long. I’m 
so sorry. Tell your mother this is the best I could 
do for her. I knew you were waiting, so I didn’t let 

32 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

the lady wrap it up. Open your bag, and I’ll put 
it in.” 

The bag closed, the little boy went out through one 
door, and his mother through another. The point 
where she was to rejoin him was not so far away 
but that he could w r alk to it alone. 


33 


VI 


TT’S all right, mudda, isn’t it?” 

He asked this after their campaign had been car¬ 
ried on for a good part of a year, and when they 
were nearing Christmas. He was now supposed to 
be seven. For reasons he could not explain the great 
game lost its zest. In as far as he understood him¬ 
self he hated the sneaking and the secrecy. He hated 
the lying too, but lying was so much a part of their 
everyday life that he might as well have hated bread. 

“Of course it’s all right,” his mother snapped. 
“Haven’t I said so time and again? We get away 
with it, don't we? And if it wasn’t all right we 
shouldn’t be able to do that.” 

Silenced by this reasoning, even if something in his 
heart was not convinced by it, he prepared for the 
harvest of the festival. Christmas was an exciting 
time, even to Tom Coburn. Perhaps it was more 
exciting to him than to other boys, since he had so 
much to do with shops. As long ago as the middle 
of November he had noted the first stirrings of new 
energy. After that he had watched the degrees 
through which they had ripened to a splendor in 
which toys, books, skis, skates, sleds, and all the 
paraphernalia of young joyousness, made a bright 
thing of the world. Where there was so much, the 
profusion went beyond desire. One of these objects 

34 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


at a time, or two, or three, might have found him 
envious; but he couldn’t cope with such abundance. 
He could concentrate, therefore, all the more on the 
pair of fur-lined mittens which his mother promised 
him, if, as she expressed it, they could haul it off. 

By Christmas Eve they had not done so. They had 
hauled off other things—a purse, a lady’s shopping 
bag, several towels, a selection of pen-trays, some 
pairs of stockings, a bottle of shoe-polish, a baby’s 
collapsible rubber bathtub, a hair-brush, an electric 
toaster, with other articles of no great interest to 
a little boy. Moreover, only some of these things 
were for personal use; the rest would be sold dis¬ 
creetly after the next moving. It was in the nature 
of the case that such grist as came to their mill should 
be more or less as it happened. They could pick, 
but they couldn’t choose, at least to no more than 
a limited degree. Fur-lined mittens didn’t come their 
way. 

The little boy’s heart began to ache with a great 
fear. Perhaps he shouldn’t get them. Unless he 
got them by Christmas Day the spell of the occasion 
would be gone. To get them a week later wouldn’t 
be the same thing. It would not be Christmas. He 
couldn’t remember having kept a Christmas hitherto. 
He couldn’t remember ever having longed for what 
might be called an article of luxury. The yearning 
was new to him, and because new, it consumed him. 
Whenever he thought that the happiness might after 
all elude him he had to grind his teeth to keep back 
a sob, but he could not prevent the filling of his eyes 
with tears. 


35 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was not only Christmas Eve but late in the day 
before the mother found her opportunity. At half- 
past five the counter where fur-lined mittens were 
displayed was crowded with poor women who hadn’t 
had the money or the time to make their purchases 
earlier. In among them pressed Tom Coburn’s 
mother, making her selection, and asking the price. 

“Now where’s that boy? His hands grow so quick 
that I can’t be sure of anything without trying 
them on. ,, 

With a despairing smile at the saleswoman, she 
followed her usual tactics of being elbowed from the 
counter, while she looked about vainly for the boy. 
At the right moment she slipped into the pushing, 
struggling mass of tired women, where she could 
count on being no more remarked than a single crow 
in a flock. The mittens were in the muff which was 
the prize of an earlier expedition. At a side door the 
boy was waiting where she had left him. Without 
pausing for words she whispered commandingly. 

“Come along quick.” 

He went along quick, but also happily, projecting 
himself into the “surprise” to which he would wake 
on Christmas morning. 

They had reached the sidewalk when a hand was 
laid on the mother’s shoulder. 

“Will you come back a minute, please?” 

The words were so polite that for the first few 
seconds the boy was not alarmed. A lady was speak¬ 
ing, a lady like any other lady, unless it was that her 
manner was quieter, more forceful, more sure of 
itself, than he was accustomed to among women. But 

36 


I 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

what he never forgot during all the rest of his life 
was the look on his mother’s face. As he came to 
analyze it later it was one of inner surrender. She 
had come to the point which she had long foreseen 
as her objective. She had reached the end. But in 
spite of surrender, and though she grew bloodlessly 
pale, she was still determined to show fight. 

“What do you want me for?” 

“If you’ll step this way I’ll tell you.” 

“I don’t know that I care to do that. I’m going 
home.” 

“You’d better come quietly. You won’t gain any¬ 
thing by making a fuss.” 

A second lady, also forceful and sure of herself, 
having joined them they pushed their way back 
through the throng. At the glove counter a place was 
made for them. The saleswoman was beckoned to. 
The woman who had stopped them at the door con¬ 
tinued to take the lead. 

“Now, will you show us what you’ve got in your 
muff?” 

She produced the mittens. “Yes, I have got these. 
I bought and paid for them.” 

The saleswoman gave her account of the incident. 
Women shoppers gathered round. Floorwalkers 
came up. 

“It’s a lie; it’s a lie!” the boy heard his mother 
cry out, as the girl behind the counter told her tale. 
“If I didn’t pay for them it was because I forgot. 
Here’s the money. I’ll pay for them now. What do 
you take me for?” 


37 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“No; you won’t pay for them now. That’s not 
the way we do business. Just come along this way.” 

“I’m not going nowheres else. If you won’t take 
the money you can go without it. Leave me alone, 
and let me take my little boy home.” 

Her voice had the screaming helplessness of women 
in the grasp of forces without pity. A floorwalker 
laid his hand on her shoulder, compelling her to turn 
round. 

“Don’t you touch me,” she shouted. “If Tve got 
to go anywheres I can go without your tearing the 
clothes off my back, can’t I ?” 

For the little boy it was the last touch of humilia¬ 
tion. Rushing at the floorwalker, he kicked him in 
the shins. 

“Don’t you hit my mudda. I won’t let you.” 

A second floorwalker held the youngster back. 
Some of the crowd laughed. Others declared it a 
monstrous thing that women of the sort should have 
such fine-looking children. 

Presently they were surging through the crowd 
again, toward a back region of the premises. The 
boy, not crying but panting as if spent by a long 
race, held his mother by the skirt; on the other side 
one of the forceful women had her by the arm. He 
saw that his mother’s hat had been knocked to one 
side, and that a mesh of her dark hair had broken 
loose. He remembered this picture, and how the 
shoppers, wherever they passed, made a lane for them, 
shocked by the sight of their disgrace. 

They came to an office, where their party, his 
mother, himself, the two forceful women, and two 

38 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


floorwalkers, were shut in with an elderly man who 
sat behind a desk. It was still the first of the forceful 
women who took the lead. 

“Mr. Corning, we've caught this woman shop¬ 
lifting.” 

“I haven’t been,” the boy heard his mother deny. 
“Honest to God, I haven’t been.” 

“We’ve been watching her for some time past,” the 
forceful woman continued, “but we never managed 
before to get her with the goods.” 

The elderly man was gray, pale-eyed, and mild- 
mannered. He listened while the story was given 
him in detail. 

“I’m afraid we must give you in charge,” he said, 
gently, when the facts were in. 

“No, don’t do that, don’t do that,” she implored, 
tearfully. “I’ve got my little boy. He can’t do with¬ 
out me.” 

“He hasn’t done very well with you, has he?” the 
elderly man reasoned. “A woman who’s taught a boy 
of that age to steal . . .” 

He was interrupted by the coming in of a police¬ 
man, summoned by telephone. At sight of him the 
unhappy woman gave a loud inarticulate gasp of 
terror. All that for seven years she had dreaded 
seemed now about to come true. The boy felt terror 
too, but the knowledge that his mother needed him 
nerved him to be a man. 

“Don’t you be afraid, mudda. If they put you in 
jail I’ll go to jail too. I won’t let them take me away 
from you.” 

“You’d better come with me, missus,” the police- 

39 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


man said, with gruff kindliness, when the situation was 
explained to him. “The kid can come too. ’Twon’t 
be so bad. Lots of these cases. You'll live through 
it all right, and it'll learn you to keep straight. One of 
these days you may be glad that it happened.’’ 

They went out through a dimly lighted passage¬ 
way, clogged with parcels and packing-cases which 
men were loading into drays. It was dark by this 
time, the streets being lighted as at night. The police- 
station was not far away, and to it they were led 
through a series of byways in which there were few 
foot-passengers. The policeman allowed them to walk 
in front of him, so that the connection was not too 
obvious. The boy held his mother’s hand, which 
clutched at his with a nervous loosening and tighten¬ 
ing of the fingers. As the situation was beyond 
words they made no attempt to speak. 

“This way.” 

Within the police-station the officer turned them to 
the right, where they entered a small bare room. 
Brilliantly lighted with unshaded electrics, its glare 
was fierce upon the eyes. At a plain oak desk a man 
in uniform was seated with a ledger in front of him. 
Another man in uniform standing near the door 
picked his teeth to kill time. 

“Shoplifting case,” was the simple introduction of 
the party. 

They stood before the man at the desk, who dipped 
his pen in the ink, and barely glanced at them. What 
to the boy and his mother was as the end of the world 
was to him all in the day’s work. 

“Name?” 


40 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She gave her name distinctly, and less to the lad’s 
surprise than if she hadn’t often used pseudonyms. 
'‘Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw.” 

“Address?” 

She gave the address correctly. 

“Boy’s name ?” 

She spoke carefully, as one who had prepared her 
statements. “He’s been known as Thomas Coburn. 
He’s really Thomas Whitelaw. His father was my 
second husband.” 

“If he's your second husband’s child why is he 
called by your first husband’s name?” 

She was prepared here too. “Because I’d given up 
using my second husband’s name. I was unhappily 
married.” 

“Is he dead?” 

“Yes, he is.” 

Never having heard before so much of his private 
history, the boy registered it all. It was exactly the 
sort of detail for which he had been eager. It ex¬ 
plained too that name of Whitelaw, allusions to which 
had puzzled him. He was so engrossed by the fact 
that he was not Tom Coburn but Tom Whitelaw as 
hardly to listen while it was explained to his mother 
that she would spend the night in the Female House 
of Detention, and be brought before the magistrate 
in the morning. If the boy had no friends to whom 
to send him he would be well taken care of elsewhere. 

The phlegm to which she had for a few minutes 
schooled herself broke down. “Oh, can’t I keep him 
with me ? He’ll cry his eyes out without me.” 

She was given to understand that no child above 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the nursing age could be put in prison even for its 
mother’s sake. From his reverie as to Tom Whitelaw 
he waked to what was passing. 

“But I won’t leave my mudda,” he wailed, loudly. 
“I want to go to jail.” 

The kindly policeman put his arm about the boy’s 
shoulder. 

“You’ll go to jail, sonny, when your time comes, if 
you set the right way to work. Your momma’s only 
going to spend the night, and I’ll see to it that 
you-” 

In a side of the room a door opened noiselessly. 
A woman, wearing a uniform, with a bunch of keys 
hanging at her side, stood there like a Fate. She 
was a grave woman, strongly built, and with some¬ 
thing inexorable in her eyes. Even the boy guessed 
who she was, throwing himself against her, and cry¬ 
ing out, “Go ’way! go ’way! You won’t take my 
mudda away from me.” 

But the folly of resistance became evident. The 
mother herself understood it so. Walking up to the 
woman with the keys, she said in an undertone: 

“For God’s sake get me out of this. I can’t look 
on while he breaks his little heart. He’s always been 
an angel.” 

That was all. She gave no backward look. Before 
the boy knew what was about to happen, she had 
passed into a corridor, and the door had closed behind 
her. 

She was gone. He was left with these strange 
men. The need for being brave was not unknown to 
him. Not unknown to him was the power of calling 

4- 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


to his aid a secret strength which had already carried 
him through tight places. He could only express it to 
himself in the words that he mustn’t cry. Crying had 
come to stand for everything cowardly and babyish. 
He was so prone to do it that the struggle against it 
was the hardest he had to make. He struggled against 
it now; but he struggled vainly. He was all alone. 
Even the three policemen were talking together, while 
he stood deserted, and futile. His lips quivered in 
spite of himself. The tears gathered. Disgraced 
as he was anyhow, this weakness disgraced him more. 

The room had an empty corner. Straight into it he 
walked, and turned his back, his face within the angle. 
The head with an old cap on it was bowed. The 
sturdy shoulders, muffled in a cheap top-coat, heaved 
up and down. But the legs in their knickerbockers 
were both straight and strong, and the feet firmly 
planted on the floor. Except for an occasional 
strangled sound which he couldn't control, he be¬ 
trayed himself by nothing audible. 

The three policemen, all of them fathers, glanced 
at him, but forbore to glance at one another. One of 
them tried to say, “Poor kid!” but the words stuck in 
his throat. It was the kindly fellow who had brought 
the lad and the woman there who recovered himself 
first. 

“All right, then, boys. The Swindon Street Home. 
One of you can ’phone that we’re on the way.” He 
went over and laid his hand on the child’s shoulder. 
“Say, sonny, I’m goin’ to take you out to see the 
Christmas Tree.” 

The thought was a happy one. Tom Coburn had 

43 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


never seen any Christmas Trees, though he had often 
heard of them. He had specially heard of the com¬ 
munity Christmas Tree which was new that year in 
that particular city. It was to be a splendid sight, and 
against the fascination of splendor even grief was not 
wholly proof. He looked shyly round, an incredible 
wonder in his tear-stained, upturned face. 

In the street they walked hand in hand, pausing 
now and then to admire some brightly lighted window. 
The boy was in fairyland, but in spite of fairyland 
long deep sighs welled up from the springs of his 
loneliness and sorrow. To distract him the policeman 
took him into a druggist’s and bought him a cone of 
ice-cream. The boy licked it gratefully, as they made 
their way to the open space consecrated to the Tree. 

The night was brisk and frosty; the sky clear. In 
the streets there was movement, light, gayety. At a 
spot on a bit of pavement a vendor was showing a 
dancing toy, round which some scores of idlers were 
gathered. The dancing was so droll that the little 
boy laughed. The policeman bought him one. 

When they came to the Christmas Tree the lad was 
in ecstasy. Nothing he had ever dreamed of equalled 
these fruits of many-colored fires. A band was play¬ 
ing, and suddenly the multitude broke into song. 

O come, all ye faithful, 

Joyful and triumphant, 

O come ye, O come ye, to Bethlehem! 5 

Even the policeman joined in, humming the refrain 
in Latin. 


44 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Venite, adoremus; 

Venite, adoremus; 

Venite, adoremus, 

Dominum. 

Passing thus through marvels they came to the 
Swindon Street Home. The night-nurse, warned by 
telephone, was expecting them. She was a motherly 
woman who had once had a child, and knew well this 
precise situation. 

“Oh, come in, you poor little boy! Have you had 
your supper?” 

He hadn’t had his supper, though the cone of ice¬ 
cream had stilled the worst pangs of hunger. 

“Then you shall have some; and after that I'll put 
you in a nice comfy bed.” 

“He’s a fine kid,” the policeman commended, before 
going away, “and won’t give you no trouble, will you, 
sonny?” 

The boy caught him by the hand, looking up plead¬ 
ingly into his face, as if he would have kept him. 
But the policeman had children of his own, and this 
was Christmas Eve. 

“See you again, sonny,” he said, cheerily, as he 
went out, “and a merry Christmas!” 

The night matron knew by experience all the suffer¬ 
ings of little boys homesick for mothers who have 
got into trouble. She had dealt with them by the 
hundred. 

“Now, dear, while Mrs. Lamson is getting your 
supper we’ll go to the washroom and you’ll wash your 
face and hands. Then you’ll feel more like eating, 
won’t you?” 


45 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Deprived of his policeman, despair would have 
settled on him again, had it not been for the night 
matron’s hearty voice. The deeper his woe, and it 
was very deep, the less he could resist friendlines'. 
Just as in that first agony, when he was only eight 
months old, he had turned to the only love available, 
so now he yielded again. He was not reconciled; he 
was not even comforted; he was only responsive and 
grateful, thus getting the strength to go on. 

Going on was only in letting the night matron scrub 
his face and hands, and submitting patiently. As 
they went from the washroom to the dining room he 
held her by the hand. He did this first because he 
couldn’t let her go, and then because the halls were 
big and bare and dark. Never had he been in any 
place so vast, or so impersonal. He was used to 
strangeness, as they moved so often, but not to 
strangeness on so immense a scale. It was a relief to 
him, because it brought in a note of hominess, to hear 
from an upper floor a forlorn little baby cry. 

His supper toned him up. He could speak of his 
great sorrow. While the night matron sat with him 
and helped him to porridge he asked, suddenly: 

“Will they let me go to jail and stay with my mudaa 
to-morrow ?” 

“You see, dear, your mother may not be in jail 
to-morrow. Perhaps she’ll be let out, and then you 
can go home with her.” 

“They didn’t ought to put her in. I’m big. I could 
work for her, and then she wouldn’t have to take 
things no more.” 

“But bless you, darling, you’ll be able to work for 

46 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


her as it is. They won’t keep her very long—not so 
very long—and I’ll look after you till she comes out. 
After that . . .” 

“What's your name?” he asked, solemnly, as if he 
wished to nail her to the bargain. 

“Mrs. Crewdson’s my name. Pm a widow. I like 
little boys. I like you especially. I think we’re going 
to be friends.” 

As a proof of this she took him to her own room, 
instead of to a dormitory, where she gave him a bath, 
found a clean night-shirt which, being too big, 
descended to his feet, and put him to sleep in a cot she 
kept on purpose for homeless little children in danger 
of being too lonely. 

“You see, dear,” she explained to him, “I don’t go 
to bed all night. I stay up to look after all the little 
children—there are a lot of them in this house—who 
may want something. So you needn't be afraid. I’ll 
leave a light burning, and I ll be in and out all the 
time. If you wake up and hear a noise, you’ll know 
that that’ll be me going about in the rooms, but mostly 
I’ll be in this room. Now, don’t you want to say your 
prayers?” 

He didn’t want to say his prayers because he had 
never said any. She suggested, therefore, that he 
should kneel on the bed, put his hands together, and 
repeat the words she told him to say, as she sat on the 
edge of the cot. 

“Dear God”—“Dear God”—“take care of me to¬ 
night”—“take care of me to-night”—“and take care 
of my dear mother”—“and take care of my dear 

47 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


mudda”—“and make us happy again”—“and make us 
happy again”—“for Jesus Christ’s sake”—“for Jesus 
Christ’s sake”—“Amen”—“Amen.” 

“God’s up in the sky, isn’t He?” he asked, as he 
hugged his dancing toy to him and let her cover 
him up. 

“God’s everywhere where there’s love, it seems to 
me, dear. I bring a*little bit of God to you, and you 
bring a little bit of God to me; and so we have Him 
right here. That’s a good thought to go to sleep on, 
isn’t it? So good-night, dear.” 

She kissed him as she supposed his mother would 
have done. He threw his arms about her neck, draw¬ 
ing her face close to his. “Good night, dear,” he 
whispered back, and almost before she rose from the 
bedside she knew he was asleep. 

Somewhere toward morning she came into the room 
and found him sitting up in his cot. 

“Will it soon be daytime, Mrs. Crewdson?” 

“Yes, dear; not so very long now.” 

“And when daytime comes could I go to the jail?” 

“Not too early, dear. They wouldn’t let you in.” 

“Oh, but I don’t want to go in. I only want to 
stand outside. Then if my mudda looks out of the 
window, she’ll see her little boy.” 

Throwing herself on her knees, she clasped him in 
her arms. “Oh, you darling! How I wish God had 
given me a little son like you! I did have one—he 
would have been just your age—only I—I lost him.” 

Touched by this tribute to himself, as well as by his 
friend’s bereavement, he brought out a fine manly 

48 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


phrase he had long been saving for an adequate 
occasion. 

“The hell you did, Mrs. Crewdson!’’ 

Having thus expressed his sympathy, he nestled 
down to sleep again, hugging his dancing toy. 


49 


VII 


TTE woke to his first Christmas. That is, he woke 
*■* to find a chair drawn up beside his cot and 
stocked with little presents. He had never had pres¬ 
ents before. It had not been his mother’s custom to 
make them. Since she gave him what she could 
afford, and they shared everything in common, pres¬ 
ents would have seemed to her superfluous. 

But here were half a dozen parcels done up in white 
paper and tied with red ribbon, and on them he could 
read his name. At least, he could read Tom, while he 
guessed from the length of the word and initial W 
that the other name was Whitelaw. So he was to be 
Tom Whitelaw now! The fact seemed to make a 
change in his identity. He stowed it away in the back 
of his mind for later meditation, in order to feast his 
soul on the mystic bounty of Santa Claus. 

He knew who Santa Claus was. He had often seen 
him in the windows of the big stores, surrounded by 
tempting packages, and driving reindeer harnessed to 
a sleigh. He knew that he drove over the roofs of 
houses, down chimneys, and out through grates. 
Somewhere, too, he harbored the suspicion that this 
was only childish talk, and that the real Santa Claus 
must be a father or a mother, or in this case Mrs. 
Crewdson; only both childish talk and fact simmered 
without conflict in his brain. It was easier to think 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


that a supernatural good-will had brought him this 
profusion than that commonplace hands, which had 
never done much for him hitherto, should all of a 
sudden be busy on his behalf. 

Raising himself on his elbow, his first thought 
came with the bubbling of a sob. “My mudda is in 
jail!” His second was in the nature of a corollary, 
“But she’ll like it when I tell her that Santa Claus 
took care of her little boy.” The deduction gave him 
permission to enjoy himself. 

At first he only gazed in a rapture that hardly 
guessed at what was beneath these snowy coverings. 
What he was to get was secondary to the fact that he 
was getting something. For the first time in his life 
he was taken into that vast family of boys and girls 
for whom Christmas has significance. Up to this 
morning he had stood outside of it wistfully—yearn¬ 
ing, hoping, and yet condemned to stand aloof. Now, 
if his mudda hadn’t been in jail . . . 

The parcels were larger and smaller. Beginning 
with the smallest, he arranged them according to size. 
Merely to touch them sent a thrill through his frame. 
The smallest was round like an orange and yet yielded 
to pressure. He was almost sure it was a rubber ball. 
He could have been quite sure, only that he preferred 
the condition of suspense. 

It was long before he could bring himself to untie 
the first red ribbon bow, his surprise on finding a 
rubber ball being no less keen than if he hadn’t known 
it was a rubber ball on first taking it between his 
fingers. A handkerchief laid out flat, making the 
second parcel seem bigger than it was, sent him up in 

5i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the scale of social promotion. By way of candies, 
nuts, a toothbrush with tooth paste, he came to the 
largest of all, a History of Mankind, written in words 
of one syllable, and garnished with highly-colored 
pictures of various racial types. If only his mother 
hadn’t been in jail . . . 

That his mother was no longer in jail was a fact he 
learned later in the day. It was a day of extremes, of 
quick rushes of rapture out of which he would fall 
suddenly, to go away somewhere and moan. When 
he begged, as he begged every hour or two, to be 
taken to the jail, he could be distracted by rompings 
with the other children, most of them in some such 
case as his own, or by some novelty in the life. To 
eat turkey and plum pudding at the head of one of 
three long tables, each seating twelve or fourteen, was 
to be raised to a point of social eminence beyond 
which it seemed there could be nothing more to reach. 
But in the midst of this pride the hard facts would 
recur to him, and turkey and plum pudding choke him. 

That something had happened he began to infer 
when his beloved policeman appeared at the home in 
the afternoon. Having seen him enter, the boy ran up 
to him. 

“Oh, mister, are you going to take me to the jail?” 

Mister patted him on the head, though he answered, 
absently, “Not just now, sonny. You know you’re 
goin’ to have a Christmas Tree. Eve come to see Miss 
Honiton.” 

Miss Honiton, one of the day matrons, having 
appeared at the end of the hall, the policeman turned 
him about by the shoulders. 

52 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Now be off with you and play. This has got to be 
private.” 

He took himself off but only to the end of the hall, 
where they didn’t notice that he lingered. He lingered 
because he knew that, whatever the mystery, it had 
something to do with him. 

He caught, however, no more than words which he 
couldn’t understand. Cyanide of potassium! Only 
his quick ear and retentive memory enabled him to lay 
hold of syllables so difficult. His mother had taken 
something or hadn’t taken something, he couldn’t 
make out which. All he saw was that both of his 
friends looked grave, Miss Honiton summing up 
their consultation, 

“I’ll let him enjoy the Christmas Tree before say¬ 
ing anything about it.” 

The policeman answered, regretfully: “Do you 
think you must?” 

“I know I must. He ought to be told. He has a 
right to know. He might resent it later if we didn’t 
tell him now.” 

“Very well, sister. I leave it to you.” 

The door having closed on this friend, Tom White- 
law, so to call him henceforth, made his way into the 
room where the Christmas Tree was presently to be 
lighted up. But he had no heart for the spectacle. 
There was something new. In the grip of the forces 
which controlled his life he felt helpless, small. Even 
his companions in misfortune, as all these children 
were, could be relatively light-hearted. They could 
clap their hands when the Tree began to burn with 
magic fires, and take pleasure in the presents handed 

53 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


out to them. He could not. He was waiting for 
something to be told to him—something he had a right 
to know. 

One by one, the presents were cut from the Tree; 
one by one the children went up to receive this addi¬ 
tion to what Santa Claus had brought them in the 
morning. His own name was among the last. When 
it was called he went forward perfunctorily at first, 
and then with a sudden inspiration. 

His package was handed him, not by one of the 
matrons but by a beaming young lady from outside. 
As she bent to deliver it he had his question ready. 

“Please, miss, what’s cyanide of potassium?” 

He had repeated the words to himself so often 
during the half hour since first hearing them that he 
pronounced them distinctly. The young lady laughed. 

“Why, I think it’s a deadly poison.” She turned to 
the matron nearest her. “What is cyanide of potas¬ 
sium? This dear little boy wants to know.” 

But the dear little boy had already walked soberly 
back to his seat. While the other children made merry 
with their presents he sat with his on his lap, and 
reflected. Poison was something that killed people. 
He knew that. In one of the houses where they had 
lived a woman had taken poison, and two days later 
he had seen her carried out in a long black box. The 
impression had remained with him poignantly. 

He had no inclination to cry. Tears could bring 
little relief in this kind of cosmic catastrophe. If his 
mother had taken poison and was to be carried out in 
a long black box, everything that had made up his 
world would have collapsed. He could only wait sub- 

54 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


missively till the thing he ought to know was told to 
him. 

It was told when the giving of the presents was 
over, and the children flocked out of the room to get 
ready for their Christmas supper. Miss Honiton was 
waiting near the door. 

“Come into my office, dear. I want to ask you a 
few questions.” 

Miss Honiton’s office was a mixture of office and 
sitting room, in that it had business furniture offset 
by photographs and knicknacks. Sitting at her desk, 
she turned to the lad, who stood as if to attention, a 
long thin sympathetic face, stamped with practical 
acumen. 

“I wanted to ask you if besides your mother you 
have any relations.” 

His dark blue eyes, deep set beneath his bushy 
brows, she thought the most serious and earnest she 
had ever seen in any of the hundreds of homeless little 
boys she had had to deal with. 

“No, miss.” 

“No brothers or sisters, no uncles or aunts ?” 

“No, miss.” 

“Didn’t your mother ever take you to see anyone?” 

“No, miss.” 

“Well, then, didn’t anyone ever come to see her?” 

“No, miss.” 

To the point she was trying to reach she went 
round by another way. Where did they live? How 
long had they lived there? Where had they lived 
before that? How long had they lived in that place? 
He answered to the best of his recollection, but when 

55 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


it came to their flittings from tenement to tenement, 
and from town to town, his recollection didn’t take 
him very far. Miss Honiton soon understood that 
she might as well question a bird as to its migrations. 

For a minute she said nothing, turning over in her 
mind the various ways of breaking her painful news, 
when he himself asked, suddenly: 

“Is my mudda dead?” 

The question was so direct that she felt it deserved 
a direct answer. 

“Yes, dear.” 

“Did she”—he pulled himself together for the big 
words—“did she take cyanide of potassium?” 

“Yes, dear; so I understand.” 

“Will they take her away in a long black box?” 

“She’ll be buried, dear, of course. There’ll have to 
be a funeral somewhere.” 

“Can I go to it?” 

“Yes, dear, certainly. I’ll go with you myself.” 

Fie said nothing more, and Miss Floniton felt the 
futility of trying to comfort him. There was no 
opening for comfort in that stony little face. All she 
could suggest to break the tension was to ask if he 
wouldn’t like his supper. 

He went to his supper and ate it. He ate it rumi- 
nantly, speechlessly. What had happened to him he 
could not measure; what was before him he could 
not probe. All he knew of himself was that ho had 
become a clod of misery, with almost nothing to tem¬ 
per his desolation. 

Two big tears rolled down his cheeks without his 

56 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


being aware of it. They did not, however, escape the 
eyes of a little girl who sat near him. 

“Who’s a cry-baby?” she shrieked, to the enter¬ 
tainment of the lookers-on. She pointed at him with 
her spoon. “A grea’ big boy like that cryin’ for his 
momma!” 

He accepted the scorn as a tonic. “A grea’ big boy 
like that cryin’ for his momma,” were the words with 
which he kept many a pang during the next few days 
from being more than a tearless anguish. 

Miss Honiton was as good as her word as to going 
with him to the rooms which housed the long black 
box. This he understood to be all that now repre¬ 
sented his mudda. She had tried to explain the place 
as an “undertaker’s parlor,’’ but the words were out¬ 
side his vocabulary. In the same way the why and 
the wherefore of the ceremony were outside his intelli¬ 
gence. He and Miss Honiton went into the dim room, 
and stood near the thing he heard mentioned as “the 
body.” After some mumbled reading they went out 
again, and back to the Swindon Street Home. 

Back in the Swindon Street Home he was still 
without a wherefore or a why. He got up, he washed, 
he dressed, he ate, he went to bed again. He was in a 
dormitory now with three other little boys, all of 
them too deep in the problems of parents in jail or in 
parts unknown to offer him much fellowship. They 
cried when they were left alone in bed, or they cried 
in their sleep; but they cried. It was his own pride, 
and in no small measure his strength, that he didn’t 
cry, unless he cried in dreams. 

Everyone was good to him, Mrs. Crewdson and 

57 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Miss Honiton especially, but no one could give him the 
clue to life which instinctively he clutched for. That 
one didn’t stay forever in the Swindon Street Home 
he could see from observation. The children he had 
found there went away; other children came. Some 
of these stayed but a night or two. None of them 
stayed much longer. By those sixth and seventh 
senses which children develop when they are in trouble 
he divined that conferences were taking place on his 
behalf. Now and then he detected glances shot 
toward him by the matrons in discussion which told 
him that he was being talked about. It was easy to 
deduce that he was in the Swindon Street Home 
longer than was the custom because they didn’t know 
what to do with him. He inferred that they didn’t 
know what to do with him from the many questions 
which many people asked. Sometimes it was a man, 
more times it was a woman, but the questions were 
always along the lines of those of Miss Honiton as he 
came out from the children’s Christmas Tree. Had he 
any relatives? Had he any friends? If he had they 
ought to look after him. It was hard for these kindly 
people to believe that he had no claim whatever on any 
member of the human race. 

He began to hear the words, a State ward. Though 
they meant nothing to him at first, he strove, as he 
always did, with new words and expressions, to find 
their application. Then one evening, as Mrs. Crewd- 
son was putting him to bed, she told him that that was 
what he had become. 

“You see, darling, now that your father and mother 
are both dead, the whole country is going to adopt 

58 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


you. Isn’t that nice ? And it isn’t everything. You’re 
going to have a home—not a home like this—what we 
• call an institution—but a real home—with a real 
father and mother in it, and real brothers and sisters.” 

He took this stolidly. He was not to be moved now 
by anything that could happen. A waif on the world, 
the world had the right to pitch him in any direction 
that it chose. All he could do with his own desires 
was to beat them into submission. He mustn’t cry! 
His fears and his griefs alike focussed themselves into 
that resolve. It was the only way in which he could 
translate his stout-hearted will to endure. 


59 


VIII 


O conduct him to his new home, Mrs. Crewdson 



A gave up the whole of the morning she was sup¬ 
posed to spend in sleep after her all-night vigil. The 
home was in a little town a short distance up the Hud¬ 
son. Though the railway journey was not long, it was 
the longest he had ever taken, and, once the river came 
within view, it was not without its excitements. His 
spirits began to rise with a sense of new adventure. 
There were things to look at, bridges, steamers, a 
man-o’-war at anchor, lumber yards, coal sheds, an 
open-air exhibit of mortuary monuments, and high 
overhead the clear cold blue of a January sky. On the 
other side of the river the wooded heights made a 
bold brown bastion, flecked here and there with snow. 

As he had not asked where they were going, or the 
composition of the family with whom the Guardian of 
State Wards was placing him, his protectress permit¬ 
ted him to make his own discoveries. New faces, new 
contacts, new necessities, would help him to forget 
the old. 

They got out at the station of Harfrey. Mrs. 
Crewdson carried the suitcase containing the ward¬ 
robe rescued when they had searched the rooms 
which he and his mother had occupied last. In front 
of the station they got on a ramshackle street car, 
which zigzagged up the face of the bank, rising steeply 


6o 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


from the river, so reaching the little town. They 
turned sharply at the top of the ridge to run through 
the one long street. It was a mean-looking street of 
drab wooden dwellings and drab wooden shops, 
occupied mostly by people dependent on the grand 
seigneurs of the neighboring big “places.” An ugly 
schoolhouse, an ugly engine house, two or three ugly 
churches, further defied that beauty of which God had 
been so generous. 

Having got out at a corner at which the car stopped, 
they walked to a small wooden house with a mansard 
roof, standing back from the street. It was a putty- 
colored house, with window and door frames in 
flecked, anaemic yellow. Perched on the edge of the 
ridge, it had three stories at the back and but two in 
front. What had once been an orchard had dwindled 
now to three or four apple trees, the rest of the ground 
being utilized as a chicken run. As the day was sunny, 
a few Plymouth Rocks were scratching and pecking in 
the yard. 

Having turned in here, they found themselves ex¬ 
pected, the front door opening before they reached the 
cement slab in front of it. The greetings were all for 
Mrs. Crewdson, who was plainly an old friend. The 
boy went in only because Mrs. Crewdson went in, and 
in the same way proceeded to a cheery, shabby sitting 
room. Here there were books and magazines about, 
while a canary in a cage began to sing as soon as he 
heard voices. To a homeless little boy the haven was 
so sweet that he forgot to take off his cap. 

The first few minutes were consumed in questions 
as to this one and that one, relatives apparently, to- 

61 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


gether with data given and received as to certain rec¬ 
ognized maladies. Mrs. Crewdson was getting better 
of her headaches, but Mrs. Tollivant still suffered 
from her varicose veins. Only when these prelimi¬ 
naries were out of the way and Mrs. Crewdson had 
thrown off her outer wraps, was the introduction 
accomplished. 

“So I’ve brought you the boy! Tom, dear, this is 
Mrs. Tollivant who’s going to take care of you. Your 
cap, Tom! I imagine,” she continued, with an apolo¬ 
getic smile, “you’ll find manners very rudimentary.” 

Obliged to take an early train back to New York, 
Mrs. Crewdson talked with veiled, confidential frank¬ 
ness. A boy of seven could not be supposed to seize 
the drift of her cautious phraseology, even if he 
heard some of it. 

“So you know the main features of the case. ... I 
told them it wouldn’t be fair to you to let you assume 
so much responsibility without your knowing the 
whole. . . . With children of your own to think of, 
you couldn’t expose them to a harmful influence unless 
you were put in a position to take every precaution 
against ... Not that we’ve seen anything ourselves. 
. . . But, of course, after such a bringing up there 
can’t but be traces. . . . And such good material 
there. . . . I’m sure you’ll find it so. . . . Person¬ 
ally, I haven’t seen a human being in a long time to 
whom my heart has gone . . . Only there it is. . . . 
An inheritance which can’t but be . . .” 

He didn’t feel betrayed. He had nothing to resent. 
Mrs. Crewdson had proved herself his friend, and he 
trusted her. Without knowing all the words she used, 

62 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


he caught easily enough the nature of the sentiments 
they stood for. These he accepted meekly. He was a 
bad boy. His mother and he had been engaged in 
wicked practices. Dimly, in unallayed mental discom¬ 
fort, he had been convinced of this himself; and now 
it was clear to everyone. If they hadn’t known what 
to do with him it was because a bad boy couldn’t fit 
rightly into a world where everyone else was good. 
A young evildoer, he had no role left but that of 
humility. 

He was the more keenly aware of this after Mrs. 
Crewdson had bidden him farewell, and he was face to 
face with his new foster mother. A wiry little woman, 
quick in action and sharp in tongue, she would be kind 
to him, with a nervous, nagging kindness. He got 
this impression, as he got an odor or a taste, without 
having to define or analyze. Later in life, when he 
had come to observe something of the stamp which 
professions leave on personalities, he was not sur¬ 
prised that she should have worn herself out in school¬ 
teaching before marrying Andrew Tollivant, a book¬ 
keeper. As he sat now, just as Mrs. Crewdson had 
left him, his overcoat still on his back, his cap in his 
hand, his feet dangling because the chair was too high 
for him, she treated him as if he were a class. 

“Now, little boy, before we go any farther, you and 
I had better understand each other.” 

With this brisk call to his attention, she sat down in 
front of him, frightening him to begin with. 

“You know that this is now to be your home, and 
I intend to do my duty by you to the best of my ability. 
Mr. Tollivant will do the same. If you take the chil- 

63 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


dren in the right way Fm sure you’ll find them 
friendly. They were very nice to the last little boy 
the Board of Guardians sent to us.” 

Staring in fascinated awe at the starry brightness 
of her eyes, and the wrinkles of worry around them, 
he waited in silence for more. 

“But one or two things I hope you’ll remember on 
your side. Perhaps you haven’t heard that the Board 
has found it hard to get anyone to take you. You're 
old enough to know that where there are children in 
a family people are shy of a boy who’s had just your 
history. But I’ve run the risk. It’s a great risk, I 
admit, and may be dangerous to my own. Do you 
understand what I mean?” 

“No, ma’am,” he said, blankly. 

“Then I’ll tell you. There are two things children 
must learn as soon as they’re able to learn anything. 
One is to be honest; the other is to tell the truth. 
You know what telling the truth is, don't you?” 

He did know, but paralyzed by her earnestness, he 
denied the fact. “No, ma’am.” 

“So there you are! And I don’t suppose you’ve 
been taught anything about honesty.” 

“No, ma’am.” 

“Then you must begin to learn.” 

He began to learn that minute. Still treating him 
as a class, she delivered a little lecture, such as a 
child of tender years could understand, on the two 
basic virtues of which he had pleaded ignorance. He 
listened as in a trance, his eyes fixed on her vacantly. 
Though seizing a disconnected word or two, fear kept 

64 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


him from getting the gist of it all, as he generally 
did. 

“It’s your influence on the children that I want 
you to beware of. Arthur is older than you, but he’s 
only ten; and a boy with your experience could easily 
teach him a good deal of harm. Cilly is eight, and 
Bertie only five. You’ll be careful with them, won’t 
you? Do you know that if we lead others astray God 
will call us to account for it?” 

“No, ma’am.” 

“Well, He will; and I want you to remember it, 
and be afraid. Unless you’re afraid of God you’ll 
never grow into the good boy I hope we’re going to 
make of you.” 

The homily finished, he was instructed in the ways 
of the upper floor, where, in the sloping space under 
the eaves, he was to have his room. After this he 
came back to the sitting room, not knowing what else 
to do. He was in a daze. It was as if he had dropped 
on another planet where nothing was familiar. 
Whether to stand up or sit down he didn’t know. 
He didn’t know what to think, or what to think about. 
Cut loose from his bearings, he floated in mental 
space. 

As standing seemed to commit him to least that 
was wrong, he stood. Standing implied looking out 
of the window, and looking out of the window showed 
him, about half past twelve, a well-built boy, rosy with 
the cold, noisy from exuberance of spirit, swinging 
in at the gate and brandishing a hockey stick. From 
her preparation of the dinner his mother ran to meet 

65 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


him at the door. She spoke in a loud whisper that 
easily reached the sitting room. 

“Now be careful, Arthur. He’s come. He’s in 
there.” 

Arthur responded with noisy indifference. “Who? 
The crook?” 

“Sh-h-h, dear! You mustn't call him that. We 
must help him to forget it, and to grow into being 
like ourselves.” 

Arthur grunted noncommittally. Presently he 
strolled into the sitting room, whistling a tune. With 
hands in his pockets, his bearing was that of an over- 
lord. He made a circuit of the room, eying the new 
guest, as the new guest eyed him back. 

“Hello?” the overlord said at last, with a faint 
note of interrogation. 

Still whistling and still with his hands in his pockets, 
he strolled out again. 

Tom Whitelaw's nerves had become so many run¬ 
lets for shame. He was the crook! He knew the 
word as one which crooks themselves use contemptu¬ 
ously. If he should hear it again . . . But happily 
Mrs. Tollivant had put her veto on its use. 

The gate clicked again. Coming up the pathway, 
he saw a girl of about his own age, with a boy much 
younger who swung himself on crutches. All his 
movements were twisted and grotesque. His head 
was sunk into his shoulders as if he had no neck. 
His feet and legs wore metal braces. His face had 
the uncannily aged look produced by suffering. With¬ 
out actually helping him, the little girl kept by his 
side maternally. She was a dainty little girl, very 

66 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


fair, with shiny yellow hair hanging down her back, 
like a fairy princess in a picture book. The boy 
looking out of the window fell in love with her at 
sight. He was sure that in her he would find a 

friend. 

On entering she called out in a whiny voice, very 
musical to Tom Whitelaw’s ear: 

“Ma! Bertie’s been a naughty boy. He wouldn’t 
sing 'Pretty Birdling’ for Miss Smallbones. I told 
him you’d punish him, and you will, won’t you, ma?” 

As there was no response to this, the young ones 
came to the door of the sitting room and looked in. 
They stared at the stranger, and the stranger stared 
at them, with the unabashed frankness of young 
animals. Having stared their fill, the son and 
daughter of the house went off to ask about dinner. 

To Tom that dinner was another new experience. 
For the first time in his life he sat down to what is 
known as a family meal. Attempts had sometimes 
been made by well-meaning women in the tenements 
to rope him to their tables, but his mother had never 
permitted him to yield to them. Now he sat down 
with those of his own age, to be served like them, 
and on some sort of footing of equality. The honor 
was so great that he could hardly swallow. Second 
helpings were beyond him. 

The afternoon was blank again. “You’ll begin to 
go to school on Monday,” Mrs. Tollivant had ex¬ 
plained; but in the meantime he had the hours to 
himself. They were long. He was lonely. Having 
been given permission to go into the yard, he stood 
studying the Plymouth Rocks. Presently he was 

67 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


conscious of a light step behind him. Before he had 
time to turn around he also heard a voice. It was a 
whiny voice, yet sharp and peremptory. 

“You stop looking at our hens.” 

The fairy princess had not come up to him; she 
had paused some two or three yards away. Her ex¬ 
pression was so haughty that it hurt him. It hurt 
him more from her than from anybody else because 
of his admiration. He looked at her beseechingly, 
not for permission to go on studying the Plymouth 
Rocks, but for some shade of relenting. He got 
none. The sharp little face was as glittering and 
cold as one of the icicles hanging from the roof 
behind her. Heavy at heart, he turned to go into 
the house by the back door. 

He had climbed most of the hill when the clear, 
whiny voice arrested him. 

“Who’s a crook?” 

At this stab in the back he leaped round, fury in 
his dark blue eyes. But the fairy princess was used 
to fury in dark blue eyes, and knew how best to defy 
it. The tip of the tongue she thrust out at him added 
insolence to insult. He turned again, and, wounded 
in all his being, went on into the house. 

Near the back door there was a sun parlor, and in 
it he saw Bertie, squatting in a small-wheeled chair 
built for his convenience. Bertie called to him in¬ 
vitingly. 

“I’ve got a book.” 

“I’ve got a book, too,” he returned, in Bertie’s 
own spirit. 


68 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“You show me your book, and I’ll show you 
mine.” 

The proposal being fair, he went in search of his 
History of Mankind. In a few minutes he was seated 
on the floor beside Bertie’s chair, exchanging literary 
criticisms. He liked Bertie. He had a premonition 
that Bertie was going to like him. After the disdain 
of the fairy princess, and the superciliousness of the 
overlord, this was comforting. Moreover, he could 
return Bertie’s friendliness by doing things for him 
which no one else had time to do. He could push his 
wheeled chair; he could run his errands; he could fetch 
and carry; he would like doing it. 

“I’ve got infantile paralysis.” 

“I’ve got a rubber ball.” 

“I’ve got a train.” 

“I’ve got a funny little man what dances.” 

Coming into the house, Cilly found them the best 
of friends, in the best of spirits. Without entering 
the sun-parlor, she spoke through the doorway, 
coldly. 

“Bertie, I don’t think momma would like you to 
act like that. I’ll go and ask her.” 

Mrs. Tollivant hurried from the kitchen, scouring 
a saucepan as she looked in on them. Seeing nothing 
amiss, she went away again. Then as if distrusting 
her own vision, she came back. She came back more 
than once, anxiously, suspiciously. Bertie was enjoy¬ 
ing himself with this boy picked out of the gutter. 
That the boy had been picked out of the gutter was 
not what troubled her, but that Bertie should enjoy 
himself in the lad’s society. Wise enough not to put 

69 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


notions into Bertie’s head, she stopped her ward 
later in the day, when she had the chance to speak 
to him alone. 

“I saw you playing with Bertie. Well, that’s all 
right. Only you’ll remember your promise, won’t 
you? You won’t teach him anything harmful?” 

“No, ma’am,” the boy answered, humbly, as one 
who has a large selection of harmful things to im¬ 
part. 


70 


IX 


TTE had looked forward to Monday and school. 

After four days in the Tollivant household he 
was eager for relief from it. Except for Cilly's occa¬ 
sional, and always private, taunts, they were not un¬ 
kind to him; they only treated him as an outcast whom 
they had been obliged to succor because no one else 
would do so. He had the same food and drink as 
they; his room was good enough; of whatever was 
material he had no complaint to make. There was 
only the distrust which rendered his bread bitter and 
the bed hard to lie upon. They didn’t take him in as 
one of them. They kept him outside, an alien, an in¬ 
truder. 

It was again a new experience in that for the first 
time in his life he was doing without love. When he 
was Tom Coburn he had had plenty of it at the worst 
of times. The Swindon Street Home was full of it. 
In the Tollivant house it was the only thing weighed 
and measured and stinted. He couldn’t, of course, 
make this analysis. He only knew that something on 
which his life depended was not given him. 

He hoped to find it in the school. In any case the 
school would admit him to the larger life. It would 
bind him to that human family which he had so long 
craved to enter. In addition to that, it was at school 
you learned things. 

7 1 . 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He was the more eager to learn things for the 
reason that Mrs. Tollivant had declared him back¬ 
ward. In the primary school Cilly was in the second 
grade; he must go into the first. He would be with 
children a year younger than himself. But the humili¬ 
ation would be an incentive to ambition. He had 
already decided that only by “knowing things” should 
he be able to lift himself out of his despised estate. 

The school session was all he had hoped for. Miss 
Pollard, the teacher, put in touch with his story by 
Mrs. Tollivant, kept him near to her, and watched 
over him. He learned to discriminate between his, 
has, and had, as matters of orthography, as well as 
between cat, car, and can. That twice two made four 
and twice four made eight added much to his under¬ 
standing of numbers. He sang Roving the Old 
Homeland, while Miss Pollard pointed on the map to 
the places as they were named. 

From Plymouth town to Plymouth town 
The Pilgrims made their way; 

The Puritans settled Salem, 

And Boston on the Bay. 

The air had a rhythm and a lilt which allowed for 
the inclusion of any reasonable number of redundant 
syllables. 

The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, 

Where the blue waters fork; 

The English came and conquered it, 

And turned it into New York. 

A little history, a little geography, being taught by 
the simple method of doggerel, much pleasure was 

72 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


evoked by the exercise of healthy lungs. Listening 
to her new pupil, Miss Pollard discovered a sweet 
treble that had never before been aware of itself, 
with a linnet’s joy in piping. A linnet’s joy was his 
joy throughout the whole morning, with no more 
than a slight flaw in his ecstasy in the thought of 
two hours in the Tollivant home before he came 
back for the afternoon. 

As Cilly called for Bertie at the kindergarten, he 
walked homeward by himself. Happy with a hap¬ 
piness never experienced before, he had not noticed 
that his schoolmates hung away from him, tittering as 
he passed. To well-dressed little boys and girls his 
worn old cap, his frayed knickerbockers, and above 
all his cheap gray overcoat with a stringy sheepskin 
collar, naturally marked him for derision. They 
would have marked him for derision even had his 
story not been known to everyone. 

He went singing on his way, stepping manfully to 
the measure. 

The Dutch lived in New Amsterdam, 

Where the blue waters fork; 

The English came and conquered it, 

And turned it into New York. 

• 

They massed themselves behind him, convulsed by 
his lack of self-consciousness. The little girls giggled; 
the boys attempted to make snowballs from snow too 
powdery to hold together. One lad found a frozen 
potato which he hurled in such a way as to skim close 
to the singing figure while just missing it. Tom 
Whitelaw, unsuspicious of ill-will, turned round in 

73 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


curiosity. He was greeted by a hoot from the crowd, 
but from whom he couldn't tell. 

“Who’s the boy what his mother was put in jail?” 

The hoot became a chorus of jeers. By one after 
another the insult was taken up. 

“Who’s the boy what his mother was put in 
jaaa-il?” 

As far as he was able to distinguish, the voices of 
the little girls were the louder. In their merriment 
they screamed piercingly. 

“Gutter-snipe! Gutter-rat! Crook! Crook! Crook! 
Who’s the boy what his mother was put in ja-aa-ail?” 

Crimson, with clenched fists, with gnashing teeth, 
with tears of rage in his eyes, he stood his ground 
while they came on. They swept toward him in a 
semicircle of which he made the center. Very well! 
So much the better! He could spring on at least one 
of them, and dash his brains out on the ground. 
There was no ferocity he would not enjoy putting 
into execution. 

■ $ 

He sprang, but amid the yells of the crowd his prey 
dodged and escaped him. The semicircle broke. In¬ 
stead of advancing in massed formation, it danced 
round him now as forty or fifty imps. The imps be¬ 
wildered him, as banderilleros bewilder a bull in the 
ring. He didn’t know which to attack. When he 
lunged at one, the charge was diverted by another, 
so that he struck at the air wildly. Shrieks of mock¬ 
ery at these failures maddened him, with the heart¬ 
breaking madness of a loving thing goaded out of all 
semblance to itself. He panted, he groaned, he dashed 
about foolishly, he stumbled, he fell. When pelted 

74 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


with pebbles or scraps of ice, he was hardly aware of 
the rain upon his head. 

But the mob swept on, leaving him behind. At 
gates and corners the boy baiters disappeared, hungry 
for their dinners. Most of them forgot him as soon 
as they had turned their backs. It was easy for them 
to stop for awhile since they could begin again. 

He was alone on the gritty, icy slope surrounding 
the schoolhouse. There was no comfort for him in 
the world. Faintly he remembered as a satisfaction 
that he hadn’t cried, but even this consolation was 
cold. He wondered if he couldn’t kill himself. 

He did not kill himself, though he pondered ways 
and means of doing it. He came to the conclusion 
that it would be foolish to kill himself before killing 
some of his tormentors. He prayed about it that 
night, his first prayer, except for the one taught him 
on Christmas Eve by Mrs. Crewdson. 

To the family devotions, for which all were as¬ 
sembled about eight o’clock, before the younger chil¬ 
dren went to bed, Mr. Tollivant had begun to add a 
new petition. 

“And, O Heavenly Father, take pity on the little 
stranger within our gates, even as we have welcomed 
him into our home. Blot out his past from Thy book. 
Give him a new heart. Make him truthful and honest 
especially. Help him to be gentle, obedient . . 

But savagely the boy intervened on his own behalf. 
“O Heavenly Father, don’t! Don’t give me a new 
heart, or make me gentle and obedient, till I kill some 
of them fellows that called me a crook, for Jesus 
Christ’s sake, Amen.” 


75 


X 


H E killed none of the fellows who called him a 
crook, though during the first two years of his 
schooling he was called a crook pretty often. What¬ 
ever grade he was in, he was always that boy who 
differs from other boys, and is therefore the black 
swan in a flock of white ones. Whatever his progress, 
he made it to the tune of his own history. He was a 
gutter-snipe. His mother had killed herself in jail! 
Before she had killed herself both he and she had been 
arrested for thieving in a shop! There was not a 
house in Harfrey where the tale was not told. There 
was never a boy or girl in the school who hadn’t 
learned it before making his acquaintance. 

Besides, they said of him, he would have been “dif¬ 
ferent” anyhow. Being “different” was an offense 
less easily pardoned than being criminal. Dressed 
more poorly than they, and with no claims of a social 
kind, he carried himself with that bearing which they 
could only describe as putting on airs. It was Cilly 
Tollivant who first brought this charge home to him. 

“But I don’t, Cilly,” he protested, earnestly. “I 
don’t know how to be any other way.” 

Cilly was by this time growing sisterly. She 
couldn’t live in the house with him and not feel her 
heart relenting, and though she disdained him in pub¬ 
lic, as her own interests compelled her to do, in private 
she tried to help him. 


76 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Don’t know how to be any other way!” she ex¬ 
claimed, indignantly. “Tom Whitelaw, you make me 
sick. Don’t you know even how to talk right?” 

“Yes, but . . .” 

“There you go,” she interrupted, bitterly. “Why 
can’t you say Yep, like anybody else?” 

He took the suggestion humbly. He would try. 
His only explanation of his eccentricity was that Yep 
and Nope didn’t suit his tongue. 

But adopting Yep and Nope, as he might have 
adopted words from a foreign language, adopting 
much else that was crude and crass and vulgar and 
noisy and swaggering and standardized, according to 
schoolboy notions of the standard, he still found him¬ 
self “different.” For one thing, he looked different. 
Debase his language as he might, or coarsen his man¬ 
ners, or stultify his impulses, he couldn’t keep himself 
from shooting up tall and straight, with a carriage of 
the head which was in itself an offense to those who 
knew themselves inferior. It made nothing easier 
for him that his teachers liked and respected him. 
“Teacher’s pet” was a term of reproach hardly less 
painful than crook or gutter-snipe. But he couldn’t 
help learning easily; he couldn’t help answering po¬ 
litely when politely spoken to; he couldn’t help the 
rapture of his smile when a friendly word came his 
way. All this told against him. Fie was guyed, 
teased, worried, tortured. If there was a cap to be 
snatched it was his. If there was one of a pair of 
rubber shoes to be stolen or hidden it was his. If 
there was an exercise book to be grabbed and thrown 
up into a tree where the owner could be pelted while 

77 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


he clambered after it, it was his. Because he was 
poor, friendless, defenseless, and yet with damnable 
pride written all over him, it became a recognized 
law of the school that any meanness done to him 
would be legitimate. 

But in his third year at the Tollivants the persecu¬ 
tion waned, and in the fourth it stopped. His school¬ 
mates grew. Growing, they developed other instincts. 
Fair play was one of them; admiration for pluck 
was another. 

“You’ve got to hand it to that kid/’ Arthur Tolli- 
vant, now fourteen, had been heard to say in a circle 
of his friends. “He’s stood everything and never 
squealed a yelp. Some young tough, believe me!” 

This good opinion was reflected among the lads of 
Tom Whitelaw’s own age. They had never been 
cruel; they had only been primitive. Having passed 
beyond that stage, they forgot to no small degree 
what they had done while in it. The boy who at seven 
was the crook was at eleven Whitey the Sprinter. 
He walked to and from school with the best of them. 
With the best of them he played and fought and 
swore privately. If he put on airs it was the airs of 
being a much sadder dog than he was, daring to 
smoke a cigarette and go home with the smell of the 
wickedness on his breath. 

So, outwardly, Tom Whitelaw came in for two 
full years of good-natured toleration. If it did not 
go further than toleration it was because he was a 
State ward. On the baseball or the football team he 
might be welcomed as an equal; in homes there was 
discrimination. He was not invited to parties, and 

78 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


among the young people of Harfrey parties were 
not few. Girls who met him at the Tollivants’ didn’t 
speak to him outside. When Cilly, now being known 
as Cecilia, had her friends to celebrate her birthday, 
he remained in his room with no protest from the 
family at not joining them. None the less, it was a 
relief to be free from jeering in the streets, as well 
as from being reminded every day at school of his 
mother’s tragedy. It was a relief to him; but it was 
no more. 

For more than that the wound had gone too deep. 
Outwardly, he accepted their approaches; in his heart 
he rejected them, biding his time. He was biding 
his time, not with longings for revenge—he was too 
sensible now for that—but in the hope of passing on 
and forgetting them. By the time he was twelve he 
was already aware of his impulse toward growth. 

It was in his soul as a secret conviction, the seed’s 
knowledge of its own capacity to germinate. Most 
of the boys and girls around him he could judge, not 
by a precocious worldly wisdom, but by his gift for 
intuitive sizing up. Their range was so far and no 
farther, and they themselves were aware of it. They 
would become clerks and plumbers and carpenters and 
school-teachers and shoe dealers and provision men, 
and whatever else could reach its fulfillment in a 
small country town. He himself felt no limit. 
Life was big. He knew he could expand in it. To 
nurse resentments would be small, and would keep 
him small. All he asked was to forget them, to for¬ 
get, too, those who called them forth; but to that end 
he must be far away. 


79 


XI 



HE road to this Far-away began in the summer 


vacation of the year when he was supposed to be 
twelve. It was the year when he first went to work, 
though the work was meant to last for no more than 
a few weeks. 

Mr. Quidmore, a market gardener at Bere, in Con¬ 
necticut, some seven or eight miles eastward toward 
the Sound, had come over to ask Mr. Tollivant for a 
few hours’ work in straightening out his accounts. 
Straightening out accounts for men who were but 
amateurs at bookkeeping was a means by which Mr. 
Tollivant eked out his none-too-generous salary. 

It was a Sunday afternoon in June. They were 
in the yard, looking at the Plymouth Rocks behind 
their defenses of chicken-wire. That is, Mr. Quid- 
more was looking at the Plymouth Rocks, but Tom 
was looking at Mr. Quidmore. Mr. and Mrs. Tolli¬ 
vant were giving their guest information as to how 
they raised their hens and marketed their eggs. 

It was a family affair. Mrs. Tollivant prepared the 
food; Cecilia fed the birds; Art hunted for the eggs ; 
Bertie and Tom packed them. Mr. Quidmore was 
moved to say: 

“I wish I had a fine boy like your Art to help me 
with the berrypicking. Good money in it. Three a 
week and his keep for as long as the strawberries hold 


80 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tom saw Mrs. Tollivant shake her head at her 
husband behind Mr. Quidmore’s back. This meant 
disapproval. Disapproval could not be disapproval of 
the work, but ot Mr. Quidmore. Art already gave 
his holiday services to a dairy for a dollar less than 
Mr. Quidmore’s offer, and no keep. It was the em¬ 
ployer, then, and not the employment that Mrs. Tolli - 
vant distrusted. 

And yet Mr, Quidmore fascinated Tom. He had 
never before seen anyone whose joints had the loose¬ 
ness of one of those toys which you worked with a 
string. He was so slim, too, that you got little or no 
impression of a body beneath his flapping clofhes. 
Nervously restless, he walked with a shuffle of which 
the object seemed the keeping of his shoes from falling 
off. When he talked or laughed one side of his long 
thin face was screwed up as if by some early injury 
or paralysis. The right portion of his lips could 
smile, while the left trembled into a rictus. This 
made his speech slower and more drawling than Tom 
was accustomed to hear; but his voice was naturally 
soft, with a quality in it like cream. It was the voice 
that Tom liked especially. 

In reply to the suggestion about Art, Mr. Tolli¬ 
vant replied, as one who sees only a well-meant busi¬ 
ness proposal, 

“We’d like nothing better, Brother Quidmore; but 
the fact is Art has about as much as he can do for the 
rest of his vacation.” He waved his hand toward 
Tom. “What do you say to this boy?” 

At the glorious suggestion Tom’s heart began to 
fail for fear. He was not a fine boy like Arthur 

81 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tollivant. The possibility of earning three dollars a 
week, to say nothing of his board, was too much like 
the opening up of an Aladdin’s palace for the hope 
to be more than deceptive. It was part of his daily 
humiliation never to have had any money of his own. 
The paternity of the State paid for his food, shelter, 
and education; but it never supplied him with cash, 
or with any cash that he ever saw. To have three 
dollars a week jingling in his pocket would not only 
lift him out of his impotent dependence, but would 
make him a man. While Mr. Quidmore walked 
round him, inspecting him as if he were a dog or pig 
or other small animal for sale, he held himself with 
straightness, dignity, and strength. If he was for 
sale he would do his best to be worthy of his price. 

Mr. Quidmore nodded toward Mr. Tollivant. 
“State ward, ain’t he?” 

Mr. Tollivant admitted that he was. 

“Youngster whose moth—” 

Mrs. Tollivant interrupted kindly. “You needn’t 
be afraid of that. He’s been with us for five years. 
I think I may say that all traces of the past have 
been outlived. We can really give him a good char¬ 
acter.” 

Tom was grateful. Mr. Quidmore examined 
him again. At last he shuffled up to him, throwing 
his arm across his shoulder, and drawing him close 
to himself. 

“What about it, young fellow? Want to come?” 

Entirely won by this display of • kindliness, the 
boy smiled up into the twisted face. “Yes, sir.” 

“Then that’s settled. Put your duds together, and 

82 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

we'll go along. I guess,” he added to Mr. Tollivant, 
“that you can stretch a point to let him come, and 
get your permit from the Guardians to-morrow.” 

Mr. Tollivant agreeing that after five years’ care 
he could venture as much as this, they drove over to 
Bere in Mr. Quidmore’s dilapidated motor car. Mrs. 
Quidmore met them at the door. Her husband called 
to her: 

“Hello, there! Got a new hand to help you with 
the strawberries.” 

She answered, dejectedly. “If he’s as good as 
some of the other new hands you’ve picked up 
lately—” 

“Oh, rats! Give us a rest! If I brought the angel 
Gabriel to pick the berries you’d see something to find 
fault with.” 

That there was a rift within the lute of this couple’s 
happiness was clear to Tom before he had climbed out 
of the machine. 

“Where’s he to sleep?” Mrs. Quidmore asked in 
her tone of discontent. 

“I suppose he can sleep in the barn, can’t he?” 

“I wouldn’t put a dog to sleep in that barn, nasty, 
smelly, rotten place.” 

“Well, put him to sleep where you like. He'll get 
three a week and his keep while he’s here, and that’s 
all I’m responsible for.” Mrs. Quidmore turned and 
went into the house. Her husband winked at Tom 
as man to man. “Can you beat it ? Always like that. 
God! I don’t know how I stand it. Get in.” 

Tom got in, finding an interior as slack as Mrs. 
Quidmore herself. The Tollivant house, with four 

83 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


children in it, was often belittered, but with a little 
tidying it became spick and span. Here the house¬ 
keeping wore an air of hopelessness. Whoever did 
it did it without heart. 

“God! I hate to come into this place,” its master 
confided to Tom, as they stood in the hall, of which 
the rug lay askew, while a mirror hung crooked on 
the wall. “You and me could keep the shack looking 
dandier than this if she wasn’t here at all. I wish to 
the Lord . . 

But before the week was out the boy had won over 
Mrs. Quidmore, and begun to make her fond of him. 
Because he was eager to be useful, he helped her in 
the house, showing solicitude, too, on her personal 
account. A low-keyed, sad-eyed woman who did 
nothing to make herself attractive, she blamed her 
husband for perceiving the loss of her attractiveness. 

“He’s bound to me,” she would complain, tearfully, 
to the boy, as he dried the dishes she had washed. 
“It’s his duty to be fond of me. But he ain’t. There’s 
fifty women he likes better than he does me.” 

This note of married infelicity was new to Tom, 
especially as it reached him from both parties to the 
contract. 

“God, how she gets my goat! Sometimes I think 
how much I’d enjoy seeing her stretched out with a 
bullet through her head. I tell you that the fellow 
who’d do that for me wouldn’t be sorry in the 
end. . . 

To the boy these words were meaningless. The 
creamy drawl with which they were uttered robbed 
them of the vicious or ferocious, making them mere 

84 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


humorous explosions. He could laugh at them, and 
yet he laughed with a feeling of discomfort. 

The discomfort was the greater because in kindness 
to him lay the one point as to which the couple were 
agreed. Making no attempt to reconcile elements so 
discordant, all he could do was to soften the conditions 
which each found distasteful. He kept the house 
tidier for the man; he did for the woman a few of 
the things her husband overlooked. 

“It’s him that ought to do that,” she would point 
out, in dull rebellion. “He’s doing it for some other 
woman I’ll be bound. Who is that woman that he 
meets?” 

Conjugal betrayal was also new to Tom, and not 
easily comprehensible. That a man with a wife 
should also be “going with a girl” was a possibility 
that had never come within his experience while liv¬ 
ing with the Tollivants. Pie had heard a good many 
things from Art, as also from some other boys, but 
this event seemed to have escaped even their wide 
observation. It would have escaped his own had not 
Mrs. Quidmore harped on it. 

“I do believe he’d like to see me in my grave. I’m 
in their way, and they’d like to get me out of it. Oh, 
you needn’t tell me! Couldn’t you keep an eye on 
him, and tell me what she's like?” 

For Mrs. Quidmore’s sake he watched Mr. Quid- 
more, but as he didn’t know what he was watching 
him for the results were not helpful. And he liked 
them both. He might have said that he loved them 
both, since loving came to him so easily. Mrs. Quid- 
more washed and mended his clothes, and whenever 

85 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


she went to Harfrey or some other town she added 
to his wardrobe. Mr. Quidmore was forever drop¬ 
ping into his ear some gentle, honeyed confidence of 
which Mrs. Quidmore was the butt. Neither of them 
ever scolded him, or overworked him. He was in the 
house almost as a son. And then one day he learned 
that he was to be there altogether as a son. 



86 


XII 


H E never knew how and when the question as to 
his adoption had been raised, or whether the 
husband or the wife had raised it first. Here, too, the 
steps were taken with that kind of mystification which 
shrouded so much of his destiny. He himself was 
not consulted till, apparently, all the principal parties 
but himself had decided on the matter. One of the 
Guardians, or a representative, asked him the formal 
question as to whether or not he should like it, and 
being answered with a Yes, had gone away. The next 
thing he knew he had legally become the son of 
Martin and Anna Quidmore, and was to be hence¬ 
forth called by their name. 

The outward changes were not many. He had 
won so much freedom in the house that when he be¬ 
came its son and heir there was, for the minute, little 
more to give him. His new mother grew more openly 
affectionate; his new father drove him round in the 
dilapidated car and showed him to the neighbors as 
his boy. As far as Tom could judge, there was gen¬ 
eral approval. Martin Quidmore had taken a poor 
outcast lad and given him a home and a status in the 
world. All good people must rejoice in this sort of 
generosity. The new father rejoiced in it himself, 
smiling with a twisted smile that was like a leer, the 
only thing about him which the new son was afraid 
of. 


87 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was August now. The picking of the straw¬ 
berries having long been over, the boy had been kept 
on for other jobs. He still worked at them. He dug 
potatoes; he picked peas and beans; he pulled carrots, 
parsnips, and beets; he culled cucumbers. The hired 
hands did the heaviest work, but he shared in it to 
the limit of his strength. Sometimes he went off early 
in the morning on the great lorry, loaded with garden- 
truck, which his father drove to the big markets. 

On these journeys the new father grew most con¬ 
fidential and lovable. His mellifluous voice, which 
was sad and at the same time not quite serious, was 
lovable in itself. 

“God, how I’d like to give you a better home than 
you’ve got! But it’s no use, not as long as she’s there. 
She’ll never be anything different. She’d not make 
things brighter or cleaner or jollier, not even if she 
was to try.” 

“Well, she is trying,” the boy declared, in her de¬ 
fense ; but the only answer was a melancholy laugh. 

And yet now that he had the duties of a son, he 
set to work to improve the family relationships. He 
petted the mother, he cajoled the father. He found 
small ruses of affection in which, as it seemed to him, 
he gained both the one and the other, insensibly to 
either. His proof of this came one morning as once 
more they were driving to one of the big markets. 

“Say, boy, I’m beginning to be worried about her. 
I don’t think she can be well. She’s never been sick 
much; but gosh! now I’ll be hanged if I don’t think 
I’ll go and see a doctor and ask him to give her some 
medicine.” 


88 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


As this thoughtfulness, in spite of all indications 
to the contrary, implied a fundamental tenderness, 
the boy was glad of it. He was the more glad of it 
when, on a morning some days later, and in the same 
situation, the father drawled, in his casual way: 

“Say, I’ve seen that doctor, and he’s given me 
something he wants her to take. Thinks it will put 
her all right in no time.” 

“And did you give it to her?” he asked, eagerly. 

The honeyed voice grew sweeter. “Well, no; that's 
the trouble. You can’t get her to take doctor’s stuff, 
if she knows she’s taking it. Got to get her on the 
sly. Once when she needed a tonic I used to watch, 
round and put it in her tea. Bucked her up fine.” 

“And is that what you’re going to do now ?” 

“Well, I would, only she’d be afraid of me. 
Watches me like a cat, don’t you see she does? What 
I was thinking of was this. You know she makes a 
cup of tea for herself every day in the middle of the 
afternoon while we’re out at work. Well, now, if 
you could make an excuse to slip into the kitchen, 
and put one of these powders in her teapot—” he 
tapped the packet in his waistcoat pocket—“she’d 
never suspect nothing. She’d take it—and be cured.” 

The boy was silent. 

“You don’t want to do it, hey?” 

“Oh, I don’t say that. I was—I was—just wonder- 

• yy 

mg. 

“Wondering what?” 

“Whether it’s fair play to anyone to give them 
medicine when they don’t know they’re taking it.” 

“But if it’s to do them good?” 

89 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“But ought we to do good to people against their 
wills?” 

“Why, sure! What you thinking of? Still if 
you don't want to . . .” 

The tone hurt him. “Oh, but I will.” 

“Say I will, father. Why don’t you call me that? 
Don’t I call you son?” 

He braced himself to an effort. “All right, father; 
I will.” 

“Good! Then here’s the powder.” He drew one 
from the packet. “Don’t let none of it fall. You’ll 
steal into the kitchen this afternoon—she generally 
lays down after she’s washed the dinner things—and 
just empty the paper into the little brown teapot 
she always makes her tea in. Then burn the paper 
in the stove—there’s sure to be a fire on—so that 
she won’t find nothing lying around to make her sus¬ 
picious. You understand, don’t you?” 

He said he understood, though in his heart of hearts 
he wished that he hadn’t been charged with the duty. 


90 


XIII 


TF you had asked the boy who was now legally Tom 
Quidmore why he was reluctant to give his mother 
a powder that would do her good he would have been 
unable to explain his hesitation. Reason, in the 
main, was in favor of his doing it. In the first place, 
he had promised, and he had always responded to 
those exhortations of his teachers which laid stress 
on keeping his word. Not to keep his word had 
come to seem an offense of the nature of personal 
defilement. 

Then the whole matter had been thought out and 
decreed by an authority higher than himself. The 
child mind, like the childish mind at all times, is 
under the weight of authority. The source of the 
authority is a matter of little moment so long as it 
speaks decidedly enough. It is always a means by 
which to get rid of the bother of using private judg¬ 
ment, which as often as not is a bore to the person with 
the right to it. 

In the case of a boy of twelve, private judgment 
is hampered by a knowledge of his insufficiency. The 
man who provides food, clothing, shelter, is invested 
with the right to speak. The child mind is logical, 
orderly, respectful, and prenatally disposed to dis¬ 
cipline. Except on severe provocation it does not 
rebel. Tom Quidmore felt no impulse to rebellion, 

9i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


even though his sense of right and wrong was, for 
the moment, mystified. 

He lacked data. Such data as came to his hearing, 
and less often to his sight, lay morally outside his 
range. Like those scientifically minded men who dur¬ 
ing the childhood of our race registered the phenomena 
of electricity without going further, he had no power 
of making deductions from what eyes and ears could 
record. He knew that there was in life such an ele¬ 
ment as sexual love; but that was all he knew. It 
entered into the relations of married people, and in 
some puzzling way contributed to the birth of chil¬ 
dren; but of its wanderings and aberrations he had 
never heard. That man and wife should reach a 
breaking point was no part of his conception of the 
things that happened. There was nothing of the kind 
between the Tollivants, nor among the parents of 
the lads with whom he had grown up at Harfrey. 
That which at Harfrey had been clear unrelenting 
daylight was at Bere a gloaming haunted by strange 
shapes which perplexed and rather frightened him. 

Not until he was fourteen or fifteen years of age, 
and the Quidmore episode behind him, like an island 
passed at sea, did the significance of these queer do¬ 
ings and sayings really occur to him. All that for the 
present his mind and experience were equal to was 
listening, observing, and wondering. He knew al¬ 
ready what it was to have things which he hadn’t 
understood at the time of their happening become 
clear as he grew older. 

An illustration of this came from the small events 
of that very afternoon. On going back from his 

92 


THE Hx\PPY ISLES 


midday dinner to work in the carrot patch he fixed on 
half past two as the hour at which he would make 
the attempt to force on his mother the prescribed 
medicine. That time having arrived, he rose, brushed 
the earth from his knees, dusted his hands against 
each other, and started slowly for the house. A far¬ 
away memory which had been in the back of his mind 
ever since his father had made the odd request now 
began to assert itself, like the throb of an old pain. 

He was a little boy again. In the dim hall of the 
Swindon Street Home he was listening to the friendly 
policeman talking to Miss Honiton. He recaptured 
his own emotions, the dumb distress of the young 
creature lost in the dark, and ignorant of everything 
but its helplessness. His mother had taken something, 
or had* not taken something, he wasn't sure which. 
The beaming young lady handed him his present from 
the Christmas Tree, and told him that cyanide of 
potassium—the words were still branded on his brain 
—was a deadly poison. Then he stood once more, as 
in memory he had stood so many times, in the half- 
darkened room where words were mumbled over the 
long black box which they spoke of as “the body.” 

Now that it was all in far perspective he knew 
what it had meant. That is, he knew the type of 
woman his mother had been; he knew the kind of 
soil he had sprung from. The events of five years 
back to a boy of twelve are a very long distance away. 
So his mother seemed to Tom. So did the sneaking 
through shops, and the flights from tenement to tene¬ 
ment. So did the awful Christmas Eve when he had 
lost her. He could think of her tenderly now because 

93 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


he understood that her mind had been unhinged. 
What hurt him with a pain which never fell into 
perspective was that in trying to create in his boyish 
way some faint tradition of self-respect, he worked 
back always to this origin in shame. 

While seeing no connection between such far-off 
things and the task put upon him by his father, he 
found them jostling each other in his mind. You 
took something—and there was disaster. It was as 
far as his thought carried him. After that came the 
fact that, his respect for authority being strong, he 
dared not disobey. 

He could only dawdle. A delay of five minutes 
would be five minutes to the good. Besides, dawdling 
on a hot, windless summer afternoon, on which the 
butterflies, bees, and humming-birds were the only 
nonhuman living things not taking a siesta, eased the 
muscles cramped with long crouching in the carrot 
beds. There being two ways of getting to the house, 
he took the longer one. 

The longer one led him round the duck pond, 
whence the heat had driven ashore all the ducks and 
geese with the exception of one gander. For no 
particular reason the gander's name was Ernest. Be¬ 
tween Ernest and Gimlets, the wire-haired terrier pup, 
one of those battles such as might take place between 
Bolivia and Switzerland was in full swing of rage. 
Gimlets fought from the bank; Ernest from the 
pond. When Ernest paddled forward, with neck out¬ 
stretched and nostrils hissing, Gimlets scampered to 
the top of the shelving shore, w r here he could stand 
and bark defiantly. When Ernest swung himself 

94 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


round and made for the open sea, Gimlets galloped 
bravely down to the water’s edge, yelping out chal¬ 
lenges. This bloody fray gave the boy a further ex¬ 
cuse for lingering. Three or four times had Ernest, 
stung by the taunts to which he had tried to seem in¬ 
different, wheeled round on his enemy. Three or four 
times had Gimlets scrambled up the bank and down 
again. But he, too, recognized authority, and a call 
that he couldn’t disobey. A long whistle, and the 
battle was at an end! Gimlets trotted off. 

The whistle came from the grove of pines climbing 
the little bluff on the side of the duck pond remote 
from the house. It struck the boy as odd that his 
father should be there at a time when he was sup¬ 
posed to be cutting New Zealand spinach for the mor¬ 
row’s market. Not to be caught idling, the boy slipped 
down the bank to creep undetected below the pine- 
wood bluff. Neither seeing nor being seen, he never¬ 
theless heard voices, catching but a single word. The 
word was Bertha, and it was spoken by his father. 
The only Bertha in the place was a certain beautiful 
young widow living in Bere. That his father should 
be talking to her in the pinewood was another of 
those details difficult to explain. 

More difficult to explain he found a little scene he 
caught on looking backward. Having now passed the 
bluff, he was about to round the corner of the pond 
where the path led through a plantation of blue 
spruces which hid the house. His glancing back 
was an accident, but it made him witness of an inci¬ 
dent pastoral in its charm. 

Bertha, being indeed the beautiful young widow, 

95 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the boy was astonished to see his father steal a kiss 
from her. Bertha responded with such a slap as 
nymphs give to shepherds, running playfully away. 
His father shambled after her, as shepherds after 
nymphs, catching her in his arms. 

Tom plunged into the blue spruce plantation where 
he could be out of sight. Hot as he was already, he 
grew hotter still. What he had seen was so silly, so 
stupid, so undignified! He wished he hadn’t seen it. 
Having seen it, he wished he could forget it. He 
couldn’t forget it because, unpleasant as he found it, 
he was somehow aware that it had bearings beyond 
unpleasantness. What they were he had nothing to 
tell him. He could only run through the plantation 
as if he would leave the thing as quickly as possible 
behind him; and all at once the house came into sight. 

With the house in sight he remembered again what 
he had come to do. He stopped running. His steps 
again began to lag. Feeling for the powder in his 
waistcoat pocket, he reminded himself that it would 
do his mother good. The house lay sleeping and 
silent in the heat. He crept up to the back door. 

And there at the open window stood his mother 
rolling dough on a table. She rolled languidly, as she 
did everything. Her head drooped a little to one 
side; her expression was full of that tremulous protest 
against life which might with a word break into a 
rain of tears. 

Relieved and delighted, he stole round the house, 
to enter by another way. She was now lifting a cover 
of the stove, so that she didn’t hear his approach. 
Before she knew that anyone was there he had slipped 

96 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


his arm around her, and smacked a big kiss on her 
cheek. She turned slowly, the lifter in her hand. A 
new life seemed to dawn in her, brightening her eyes 
and flushing her sallowness. 

“You bad little boy! What did you come home 
for?” 

He replied as was true, that he had come for a 
drink of water. He had meant to take a drink of 
water after putting her powder in the teapot. “I 
thought,” he ended, “you'd be lying down asleep.” 

“I was lying down, but something made me get up.” 

He was curious. “Something—like what?” 

“Well, I just couldn’t sleep. And then I remem¬ 
bered that it was a long time since I’d made him any 
of them silver cookies he used to be so fond of.” 

He liked the name. “Is that what you’re baking?” 

“Yes; and you’ll . . .” she went back to the table, 
picking up the cutter—“you’ll have some for supper 
if you’ll—if you’ll call me ma.” 

“But I do.” 

Her smile had the slow timidity that might have 
been born of disuse. “Yes, when I ask you. But I 
want you to do it all the time, and natural.” 

“All right then; I will—ma.” 

While he stood drinking a first, and then a second, 
cup of water, she began on the memories dear to her, 
but which few now would listen to. She had been 
born in Wilmington, Delaware, where Martin also 
had been born. His father worked in a powder fac¬ 
tory in that city. It was owing to an explosion when 
he was a lad that Martin’s frame had been partially 
paralyzed. 


97 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“He wasn't blowed up or anything; he just got 
a shock. He was awful delicate, and used to have fits 
till he grew out of them. I think the crook in his face 
makes him look aristocratic, don’t you?” 

The boy having said that he didn’t know but what 
it did, she continued plaintively, cutting out her 
cookies with a heart-shaped cutter. 

“I was awful pretty in those days, and that refined 
I wouldn’t hardly do a thing for my mother in the 
house, or carry the tiniest little parcel across the 
street. I was just born ladylike. And when Martin 
and I were married he let me have a girl for the first 
two years to do everything. All he ever expected of 
me was to get up and dress, and look stylish; and 
now . . .” 

As she paused in her cutting to press back a sob, 
the boy took the opportunity to speak of getting back 
to work. 

“I think I must beat it, ma. I’ve got all those 
carrots—” 

“Oh, wait a little while. He can spare you for a 
few minutes, can’t he? Anyhow, nothing you can 
do’ll save him from going bankrupt. This place 
don’t pay. He’ll never make it pay. His work was 
to run a hat store. That’s what he did when he mar¬ 
ried me, and he made swell money at it, too.” 

The family history interested the boy, as all tales 
did which accounted for the personal. He knew now 
how Martin Quidmore’s health had broken down, and 
the doctor had ordered out-of-door life as a remedy. 
Out-of-door life would have been impossible if an 

98 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


uncle hadn’t died and left him fifteen thousand dol¬ 
lars. 

“Enough to live on quite genteel for life,” his wife 
complained, “but nothing would do but that he should 
think himself a market-gardener, him that couldn’t 
tell a turnip from a spade. Blew in the whole thing 
on this place, away from everywheres, and making 
me a drudge that hardly knew so much as to wash a 
dish. Even that I could have stood if he’d only gone 
on loving me as his marriage vows made it his duty 
to do, but—” 

“I’ll love you, ma,” the boy declared, tenderly. 
“You don’t have to cry because there’s no one to love 
you, not while I’m around.” 

The new life in her eyes was as much of incredulity 
as of joy. “Don’t say that, dearie, if you don’t mean 
it. You don’t have to love me just because I’m 
trying to be a mother to you, and look after your 
clothes.” 

“But, ma, I want to. I do.” 

They gazed at each other, she with the cutter in 
her hand, he with the cup. What he saw was not a 
feeble, slatternly woman, but some one who wanted 
him. He had not been wanted by anyone since the 
night when his mudda—he still used the word in his 
deep silences—had gone away with the wardress who 
looked like a Fate. In the five intervening years he 
had suffered less from unkindness than from being 
shut out of hearts. Here was a heart that had need 
of him, so that he had need of it. The type of heart 
didn’t matter. If it made any difference it was only 
that where there was weakness the appeal to him was 

99 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the greater. With this poor thing he would have 
something on which to spend his treasure. 

“You'll see, ma! I’ll bring in the water for you, 
and split the kindlings, and get up in the morning and 
light the fire, and milk the cow, and everything.” 

Straight and sturdy, he looked at her with the level 
gaze of eyes that seemed the calmer and more com¬ 
petent because they were hidden so far beneath his 
bushy, horizontal eyebrows. The uniform tan from 
working in the sun heightened his air of manliness. 
Even the earth on his clothes, and a smudge of it 
across his forehead where a dirty hand had been put 
up to push back his crisp ashen hair, hinted at his 
capacity to share in the world’s work. To the helpless 
woman whose prop had failed her, the coming of this 
young strength to her aid was little short of a 
miracle. 

In the struggle between tears and laughter she was 
almost hysterical. “Oh, you darling boy!” she was 
beginning, advancing to clasp him in her arms. But 
with old, old memories in his heart he dreaded the 
paroxysm of affection. 

“All right, ma!” he laughed, dodging her and slip¬ 
ping out. “I've got to beat it, or fath—” he stumbled 
on the word because he found it difficult to use—“or 
father will wonder where I am.” But once in the 
yard, he called back consolingly, though keeping to 
the practical, “Don’t you bother about Geraldine. 
I’ll go round by the pasture and drive her home as I 
come back from work. I’ll milk her, too.” 

“God bless you, dearie!" 


* 


ioo 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Standing in the doorway, shading her eyes with her 
hand, her limp figure seemed braced to a new power, 
as she watched him till he disappeared within the 
plantation of blue spruces. 


XIV 


'\Xy r HEN a whistle blew at five o’clock the hired 
* * men on the Quidmore place stopped working. 
As a son of the house, Tom Quidmore paid to the 
signal only enough attention to pile his carrots into a 
wheelbarrow and convey them to the spot where they 
would help to furnish the market lorry in the morning. 
In fulfillment of his promise to his adopted mother, 
he then went in search of Geraldine. 

Of all the tasks that he liked at Bere he liked most 
going to the pasture. It was not his regular work. 
As regular work it belonged to old Diggory; but old 
Diggory was as willing to be relieved of it as Mrs. 
Quidmore of the milking. Brushing himself down, 
and washing his hands at the tap in the garage after 
a fashion that didn’t clean them, he marched off, 
whistling. He whistled because his heart was light. 
His heart was light because his mother having been 
in the kitchen, he had escaped the necessity for giving 
her the medicine as to which he felt his odd reluctance. 

Leaving the garage behind him, he threaded a tiny 
path running through the beet-field. The turnip-field 
came next, after which he entered a strip of fine old 
timber, coming out from that on the main road to 
Bere. Along this road, for some five hundred yards, 
he tramped merrily, kicking up the dust. He liked 
this road. Not only was it open, free, and straight, 
but along its old stone walls raspberries and black- 


102 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


berries grew ripe in a tangle of wild spirea, meadow- 
rue, jewel weed, and Queen Anne’s lace. He loved 
this luxuriance, this summer sense of abundance. To 
the boy who had never known anything but poverty, 
Nature at least, in this lush Connecticut countryside, 
seemed generous. 

The pasture was on the edge of a scrubby wood¬ 
land in which the twenty acres of the Quidmore prop¬ 
erty trailed away into the unkempt. Eighty or a 
hundred years earlier, it had been the center of a 
farm now cut up into small holdings, chiefly among 
market gardeners. In the traces of the old farm¬ 
house, the old garden, the old orchard, the boy found 
his imagination touched by the pathos of a vanished 
human past. 

The land sloped from the hillside, till in the bottom 
of the hollow it became a little brambly wood such as 
in England would be called a spinney. Through the 
spinney trickled a stream which somewhere fell into 
Horseneck Brook, which somewhere fell into one of 
those shallow inlets that the Sound thrusts in on the 
coastline. Halfway between the road and the stream¬ 
let, was the old home-place, deserted so long ago that 
the cellar was choked with blackberry vines, and the 
brick of the foundation bulging out of plumb. A 
clump of lilac which had once snuggled lovingly 
against a south wall was now a big solitary bush. 
What used to be a bed of pansies had reverted to a 
scattering of cheery little heartsease faces, brightening 
the grass. The low-growing, pale-rose mallow of old 
gardens still kept up its vigor of bloom, throwing out 
a musky scent. There was something wistful in the 

103 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


spot, especially now that the sun was westering, and 
the birds skimmed low, making for their nests. 

In going for Geraldine Tom always stole a few 
minutes to linger among these memories of old joys 
and sorrows, old labors and rewards, of which nothing 
now remained but these few flowers, a few wind- 
beaten apple trees, and this dint in the ground which 
served best as a shelter for chipmunks. It was the 
part of the property farthest from the house. It was 
far, too, from any other habitation, securing him the 
privilege of solitude. The privilege was new to him. 
At Harfrey he had never known it. About the gar¬ 
dens, even at Bere, there were always the owner, the 
hired men, the customers, the neighbors who came and 
went. But in Geraldine’s pasture he found only her¬ 
self, the crows, the robins, the thrushes singing in the 
spinney, and the small wild life darting from one 
covert to another, or along the crumbling stone wall 
hung with its loopings of wild grape. 

He was not lonely on these excursions. Com¬ 
panionship had never in the Harfrey schools been such 
a pleasure that he missed anything in having to do 
without it. Rather, he enjoyed the freedom to be 
himself, to wear no mask, to have no part to play. It 
was only when alone like this that he understood how 
much of his thought and effort was spent in dancing 
to other people’s tunes. In the Tollivant home he 
could never, like the other children, speak or act 
without a second thought. As a State ward it was his 
duty to commend himself. To commend himself he 
was obliged to think twice even before venturing on 
trifles. He had formed a habit of thinking twice, of 

104 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


rarely being spontaneous. By himself in this homey 
pasture he felt the relief of one who has been balanc¬ 
ing on a tight rope at walking on the ground. 

When he had climbed the bars Geraldine, who was 
down the hill and near the spinney, had lifted her head 
and swung her tail in recognition. Not being im¬ 
patient, she went on with her browsing, leaving him 
a few minutes’ liberty. Among the heartsease and 
the mallows he flung himself down, partly because he 
was tired and partly that he might think. With so 
much to think about thought came without sequence. 
It centered soon on what he was to be. 

Of one thing he was certain; he didn’t want to be 
a market gardener. Not but that he enjoyed the open- 
air life and the novelty of closeness to the soil. Like 
the whole Quidmore connection, it was good enough 
for the time. All the same, it was only for the time, 
and one day he would break away from it. How, he 
didn’t ask. He merely knew by his intuitions that 
it would be so. 

He was going to be something big. That, too, was 
intuitive conviction. What he meant by big he was 
unable to define, beyond the fact that knowledge and 
money would enter into it. He was interested in 
money, not so much for what it gave you as for what 
it was. It was a queer thing when you came to think 
of it. A dollar bill in itself had no more value than 
any other scrap of paper; and yet it would buy a dol¬ 
lar’s worth of anything. He turned that over in his 
mind till he worked out the reason why. He worked 
out the principle of payment by check, which at first 
was as blank a mystery as marital relations. When 

105 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


newspapers came his way he studied the reports of 
the stock exchange, much as a savage who cannot 
read scans the unmeaning hieroglyphs which to wiser 
people are words. He did make out that railways 
and other great utilities must be owned by a lot of 
people who combined to put their money into them; 
but daily fluctuations in value he couldn’t understand. 
When he asked his adopted father he was told that 
he couldn’t understand it, though he knew he could. 

Long accustomed to this answer as to the bewilder¬ 
ments of life, he rarely now asked anything. If he 
was puzzled he waited for more data. Even for little 
boys things cleared themselves up if you kept them in 
your mind, and applied the explanation when it came 
your way. The point, he concluded, was not to be 
in a hurry. There were the spiders. He was fond of 
watching them. They would sit for hours as still as 
metal things, their little eyes fixed like jewels in a 
ring. Then when they saw what they wanted one 
swift dart was enough for them. So it must be with 
little boys. You got one thing to-day, and another 
thing to-morrow; but you got everything in time if 
you waited and kept alert. 

By waiting and keeping alert he would find out what 
he was to be. He had reached his point when he saw 
Geraldine pacing up the hill toward the pasture bars. 
She was giving him the hint that certain acknowledged 
rites were no longer to be put off. 

He had lowered the bars, over which she was 
stepping delicately, when he saw his father come tear¬ 
ing down the road, going toward Bere, with all the 
speed his shuffling gait could put on. Used by this 

106 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


time to erratic actions on Quidmore’s part, he was 
hardly surprised; he was only curious. He was more 
curious still when, on drawing nearer, the man seemed 
in a panic. “Looks as if he was running away from 
something,” was the lad’s first thought, though he 
couldn’t imagine from what. 

“Is anything the matter?” 

From panic the indications changed to those of 
surprise, though the voice was as velvety as ever. 

“Oh, so it’s you ! I thought it was Diggory. What 
did you—what did you—do with that powder?” 

The boy began putting up the bars while Geraldine 
plodded homeward. 

“I couldn’t give it to her. She was in the kitchen 
baking.” He thought it wise to add: “She was mak¬ 
ing silver cookies for you. You’ll have them for 
supper.” 

There followed more odd phenomena, of which the 
boy, waiting and keeping alert, only got the explana¬ 
tion later. Quidmore threw himself face downward 
on the wayside grass. With his forehead resting 
on his arm, he lay as still as one of those drunken 
men Tom had occasionally seen like logs beside some 
country road. Geraldine turned her head to ask 
why she was not followed, but the boy stood waiting 
for a further sign. He wondered whether all grown¬ 
up men had minutes like this, or whether it was part of 
the epilepsy he had heard about. 

But when Quidmore got up he was calm, the traces 
of panic having disappeared. To a more experienced 
person the symptoms would have been of relief; but 
to the lad of twelve they said nothing. 

107 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


‘Til go back with you,” was Quidmore’s only com¬ 
ment, as together they set out to follow Geraldine. 

Having reached the barn where the milking was to 
be done, Quidmore was proceeding to the house. 
In the hope of a negative, Tom asked if he should try 
again to-morrow. 

Quidmore half turned. “I'll leave that to you.” 

“I’ll do whatever you say,” Tom pleaded, desperate 
at this responsibility. 

Quidmore went on his way, calling back, in his 
creamy drawl, over his shoulder: “HI leave it entirely 
to you.” 


108 


XV 


EFT to him, Tom saw nothing in the duty but to 
' do it. He was confirmed in this resolution by 
Quidmore’s gentleness throughout the evening. It 
was a new thing in Tom’s experience of the house. 
As always with those in the habit of inflicting pain, 
merely to stop inflicting it seemed kindness. Supper 
passed without a single incident that made Mrs. Quid- 
more wince. On her part she played up with an al¬ 
most brilliant vivacity in making none of her im¬ 
potent complaints. Anything he could do to further 
this accord the boy felt he ought to do. 

He hung back only from the deed. That made him 
shudder. He was clear on the point that it made 
him shudder because of its association in his mind 
with the thing which had happened years before; and 
that, he knew, was foolish. If it would please his 
father he should make the attempt. He should make 
it perhaps the more heartily since he was free not to 
make it if he chose. 

It was the freedom that troubled him. So long 
as he did only what he was told he had nothing on 
his conscience. Now he must be sure that he was 
right; and he was not sure. Once more he didn’t 
question the fact that the medicine would do his 
mother good. The right and wrong in his judgment 
centered round doing her good against her own will. 

109 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


With no finespun theories concerning the rights of 
the individual, he was pretty certain as to what they 
were. 

A divine beauty came over the evening when, after 
he had gone to bed about half-past eight, his mother, 
in the new blossoming of her affection, came to tuck 
him in, and kiss him good night. No such thing had 
happened ho him since Mrs. Crewdson had last done 
it. Mrs. Tollivant went through this endearing rite 
with all her own children; but him she left out. Many 
a time, when from his bed beneath the eaves he heard 
her making her rounds at night, he had pressed his 
face into the pillow to control the trembling of his 
lips. True, he had come to regard the attention as 
too babyish for a man of twelve; but now that it was 
shown him he was touched by it. 

It brought to his memory something Mrs. Crewd¬ 
son had said, and which he had never forgotten. 
“God’s wherever there’s love, it seems to me, dear. I 
bring a little bit of God to you, and you bring a little 
bit of God to me, and so we have Him right here.” 
Mrs. Quidmore, too, brought a little bit of God to 
him, and he brought a little bit of God to Mrs. Quid- 
more. They showed God to each other, as if without 
each other they were not quite able to see Him. The 
fact suggested the thought that in the matter of the 
secret administration of the medicine he might pray. 

One thing he had learned with some thoroughness 
while in the Tollivant family, and that was religion. 
Both in Sunday school and in domestic instruction 
he had studied it conscientiously, and conscientiously 
accepted it. If he sometimes admitted to Bertie 


no 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tollivant, the cripple, that he “didn’t see much sense 
in it,” the confession applied to his personal inabilities. 
Bertie was the cynic and unbeliever in the Tollivant 
household. “There’s about as much sense in it,” he 
would declare secretly to Tom, “as there is in those 
old yarns about Pilgrim s Progress and Jack and the 
Beanstalk. Only don’t say that to ma or pop, be¬ 
cause the poor dears wouldn’t get you.” On Tom 
this skepticism only made the impression that he and 
Bertie didn’t understand religion any more than they 
understood sex, which was also a theme of discussion. 
They would grow to it in time, by keeping ears and 
eyes open. 

Now that he was away from the Tollivants, in a 
world where religion was never spoken of, he dis¬ 
missed it from his mind. That is, he dismissed its 
intricacies, its complicated doctrines, its galloping 
through prayers you were too sleepy to think of at 
night, and too hurried in the morning. Here he was 
admittedly influenced by Bertie. “If God loves you, 
and knows what you want, what’s the good of all 
this Now I lay me? It'd be a funny kind of God 
that wouldn’t look after you anyhow.” Tom had 
given up saying Now I lay me, partly because that, 
too, seemed babyish, but mainly on account of Bertie’s 
reasoning. “It’s more of a compliment to God,” was 
his way of explaining it to himself, “to know that 
He’ll do right of His own accord, than to suppose 
He’ll do it just because I pester Him.” So every 
night when he got into bed he took a minute to say 
to himself that God was taking care of him, making 
this confidence serve in place of more explicit peti- 


iti 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


tion. When he had anything special to pray about, he 
said, he would begin again. 

And now something special had arisen. He got 
out of bed. He didn’t kneel down because, being 
anxious not to mislead God by giving Him wrong in¬ 
formation, he had first to consider what he ought to 
say. Stealing softly across the floor, lest the creak¬ 
ing of the boards should betray the fact that he was 
up, he went to the open window, and looked out. 

It was one of those mystic nights which, to a soul 
inclined to the mystical, seem to hold a spiritual secret. 
The air, scented by millions of growing things, though 
chiefly with the acrid perfume of the blue spruces on 
which he looked down, had a pungent, heavenly odor 
such as he never caught in the daytime. There was 
a tang of salt in it, too, as from the direction of the 
Sound came the faintest rustle of a breeze. The 
rustle was so faint as not to break a stillness, which 
was more of the nature of a holy suspense because of 
the myriads of stars. 

Seeking a formula in which to couch his prayer, 
he found a phrase of Mr. Tollivant’s often used in 
domestic intercession. “And, O Heavenly Father, 
we beseech thee to act wisely in the matter of our 
needs.’’ What constituted wisdom in the matter of 
their needs would then be pointed out by Mr. Tolli- 
vant according to the day’s or the season’s require¬ 
ments. Accepting this language as that of high 
inspiration, and forgetting to kneel down, the boy 
began as he stood, looking out on the sanctified dark¬ 
ness : 

“And, O Heavenly Father, I beseech thee to act 


112 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


wisely in the matter of my needs.” Hung up there 
for lack of archaic grandiloquence, he found himself 
ending lamely: “And don’t let me give it to her if I 
oughtn’t to, for Jesus Christ’s sake, Amen.” 

With his effort he was disappointed. Not only 
had the choice of words not taken from Mr. Tollivant 
been ludicrously insufficient, but he had forgotten to 
kneel down. He had probably vitiated the whole 
prayer. He thought of revision, of constructing a 
sentence that would balance Mr. Tollivant’s, and be¬ 
ginning again with the proper ceremonial. But 
Bertie’s way of reasoning came to him again. “I 
guess He knows what I mean anyhow.” He recoiled 
at that, however, shocked at his own irreverence. The 
thought was a blasphemous liberty taken with the 
watchful and easily offended deity of whom Mr. and 
Mrs. Tollivant had begged him always to be afraid. 
He was wondering if by approaching this God at all 
he hadn’t made his plight worse, when the rising of 
the wind diverted his attention. 

It rose suddenly, in a great soft sob, but not of 
pain. Rather, it was of exultation, of cosmic joyous¬ 
ness. Coming from the farthest reaches of the world, 
from the Atlantic, from Africa, from remote islands 
and mountain tops, it blew in at the boy’s window 
with a strong, and yet gentle, cosmic force. 

“And suddenly there came a sound from heaven 
as of a rushing mighty wind.” 

Tom Quidmore had but one source of quotation, 
but he had that at his tongue’s end. The learning 
by heart of long passages from the Bible had been 
part of his education at the hands of Mr. and Mrs. 

113 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tollivant. Rightly or wrongly, he quoted the Scrip¬ 
tures, and rightly oftener than not. He quoted them 
now because, all at once, his room seemed full of the 
creative breath. He didn't say so, of course; but, 
confusedly, he felt it. All round the world there was 
wind. It was the single element in Nature which you 
couldn't see, but of which you received the living 
invigoration. It cooled, it cleansed, it strengthened. 
Wherever it passed there was an answer. The sea 
rose; the snows drifted; the trees bent; men and 
women strove to use and conquer it. A rushing 
mighty wind! A sound from heaven! That it might 
be an answer to his prayer he couldn’t stop to con¬ 
sider because he was listening to the way it rose and 
fell, and sighed and soughed and swelled triumphantly 
through the plantation of blue spruces. 

By morning it was a gale. The tall things on the 
property, the bush peas, the scarlet runners, the sweet 
corn, were all being knocked about. In spots they 
lay on the earth; in other spots they staggered from 
the perpendicular. All hands, in the words of old 
Diggory, had their work cut out for them. Tom’s 
job was to rescue as many as possible of the ears of 
sweet corn, in any case ready for picking, before they 
were damaged. 

But at half-past two he dragged himself out of the 
corn patch to fulfill the dreaded duty. Nothing had 
answered his prayer. He had not so much as seen 
his father throughout the day, as the latter had gone 
to the markets and had not returned. The gale was 
still raging, and he might be waiting for it to go down. 

Since the scene by the roadside on the previous 

114 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


afternoon he had taken a measure of his father not 
very far from accurate. He, Quidmore, wanted 
something of which he was afraid. He was too much 
afraid of it to press for it urgently; and yet he 
wanted it so fiercely that he couldn’t give it up. What 
it was the boy could not discover, except that it had 
something to do with them all. When he said with 
them all he included the elusive Bertha; though why 
he included her he once more didn’t know. 

In God he was disappointed; that he did not deny. 
In spite of the shortcomings of his prayer, he had 
clung to the hope that they might be overlooked. He 
argued a little from what he himself would have done 
had anyone come with a request inadequately phrased. 
He wouldn’t think of the manners or the words in his 
eagerness to do what lay within his power. With God 
apparently it was not so. 

There was, of course, the other effect of his prayer. 
He had only asked to be stopped if the thing was 
not to be done. If he was not stopped the inference 
was obvious. He was to go ahead. It was in order 
to go ahead that he left the corn patch. 

The kitchen when he got to it was empty. Both 
the windows, that in the south wall and that in the 
west, were open to let the wind sweep out the smell 
of cooking. Creeping halfway up the stairs, he saw 
that his mother had closed her bedroom door, a sign 
that she was really lying down. There was no help 
now for what he had to do. 

He stole back to the kitchen again. On the dresser 
he saw the brown teapot in which she would presently 
make her tea. He would only have to take it down, 

ii5 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


and spill the powder into it. The powder was in his 
waistcoat pocket. He drew it out. It was small and 
flat, in a neatly folded paper. Opening the paper, he 
saw something innocent and white, not unlike the 
sugar you spread on strawberries. Laying it in readi¬ 
ness on the table by the west window, at which his 
mother baked, he turned to take down the teapot. 

The gale grew fiercer. It was almost a tornado. 
With the teapot in his two hands he paused to look 
out of the south window at the swaying of the blue 
spruces. They moaned, they sobbed, they rocked 
wildly. You might have fancied them living crea¬ 
tures seized by a madness of despair. The fury of the 
wind, even in the kitchen, blew down a dipper hang¬ 
ing on the wall. 

There was now no time to lose. The noise of the 
falling dipper might have disturbed his mother, so 
that at any minute she might come downstairs. With 
the teapot again in his hands he turned to the table 
where he had left the thing which was to do her good. 

It was not there. 

Dismayed, startled, he looked for it on the floor; 
but it was not there. It was not anywhere in the 
kitchen. He searched and searched. 

Going outside, he found the paper caught in a 
rosebush under the window, but the something inno¬ 
cent and white had been blown to the four corners of 
the world. 

The rushing mighty wind had done its work; and 
yet it was not till two or three years later, when the 
Quidmores had passed from his life, that he won¬ 
dered if after all his prayer had not been answered. 

116 


XVI 


/^\F helping his mother against her will he never 
heard any more. When his father returned that 
evening he had the same look of panic as on the 
previous day, followed by the same expression of 
relief at seeing the domestic life going on as usual. 
But he asked no questions, nor did he ever bring the 
subject up again. When a day or two later Tom 
explained to him that the powder had been blown 
away he merely nodded, letting the matter rest. 

Autumn came on and Tom went to school at Bere. 
He liked the school. No longer a State ward, but the 
son of a man supposed to be of substance, he passed 
the tests inflicted by the savage snobbery of children. 
His quickness at sports helped him to a popularity 
justified by his good nature. With the teachers he 
was often forced to seem less intelligent than he was, 
so as to escape the odious soubriquet of ‘‘teacher’s 
pet.” 

On the whole, the winter was the happiest he had so 
far known. It could have been altogether happy had 
it not been for the tragic situation of the Quidmores. 
After the brief improvement that had followed on his 
coming they had reacted to a mutual animosity even 
more intense. Each made him a confidant. 

“God! it’s all I can do to keep my hands off her,” 
the soft drawl confessed. “If she was just to die of 

ii 7 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


a sickness, and me have nothing to do with it, I don’t 
believe I’d be satis—” He held the sentence there as 
a matter of precaution. “What do you think of a 
woman who all the years you’ve known her has never 
done anything but whine, whine, whine, because you 
ain’t givin’ her what you promised?” 

“And are you?” Tom asked, innocently. 

“I give her what I can. She don’t tempt me to do 
anything extra. Say, now, would she tempt you ?” 

Tom did his best to take the grown-up, man-to-man 
tone in which he was addressed. “I think she’s awful 
tempting, if you take her the right way.” 

To take her the right way, to take him also the 
right way, was the boy’s chief concern throughout the 
winter. To get them to take each other the right way 
was beyond him. 

“So long as he goes outside his home,” Mrs. Quid- 
more declared, with an euphemism of which the boy 
did not get the significance, “I’ll make him suffer 
for it.” 

“But, ma, he can’t stay home all the time.” 

“Oh, don’t tell me that you don’t know what I 
mean! If you wasn’t on his side you’d have found 
out for me long ago who the woman is. Just tell me 
that—” 

“And what would you do?” 

“I’d kill her, I think, if I got the chance.” 

“Oh, but ma!” 

She brandished the knife with which she was cut¬ 
ting cold ham for the supper. “I would! I would!” 

“But you wouldn’t if I asked you not to, would 
you, ma?” 

118 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The knife fell with a despairing movement of the 
hand. “Oh, I don't suppose I should do it at all. 
But he ought to love me." 

“Can he make himself love you, ma?” 

The ingenuous question went so close to the point 
that she could only dodge it. “Why shouldn’t he? 
I'm his wife, ain't I?" 

The challenge brought out another of the mysteries 
which surrounded marriage, as a penumbra fringes 
the moon on a cloudy night. When his father next 
reverted to the theme, while driving back from mar¬ 
ket, the penumbra became denser. 

“Say, boy, don’t you go to thinking that the first 
time you fall in love with a pretty face it's goin' to be 
for life. That’s where the devil sets his snare for 
men. Eight or ten years from now you'll see some 
girl, and then the devil '11 be after you. He'll try to 
make you think that if you don’t marry that girl your 
one and only chance 'll come and go. And when he 
does, my boy, just think o’ me." 

“Think of you—what about?" 

The sweetness of the tone took from the answer 
anything like bitterness. “Think how I got pinched. 
Gosh, when I look back and remember that I was as 
crazy to get her as a pup to catch a squir’l I can't 
believe it was me. But don't forget what I’m tellin’ 
you. No fellow ought to think of bein’ married till 
he’s over thirty. He can’t be expected to know what 
he’ll love permanent till then." 

It was the perpetual enigma. “But you always 
love your wife when you’re married to her, don’t 
you?" 

119 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The answer was in loud satirical laughter, with the 
observation that Tom was the limit for innocence. 

Quite as disturbing as questions of love and mar¬ 
riage were those relating to the fact that the man who 
had done very well as a hatter was a failure as a 
market gardener. 

“A hell of a business, this is! Rothschild and 
Rockefeller together couldn’t make it pay. Gosh, how 
I hate it! Hate everything about it, and home worst 
of all. Know a little woman that if she’d light out 
with me ...” 

In different keys and conjunctions these con¬ 
fidences were made to the boy all through the winter. 
If they did not distress him more it was because they 
were over his head. The disputes of the gods affect 
mortals only indirectly. When Jupiter and Juno dis¬ 
agree men feel that they can leave it to Olympus to 
manage its own affairs. So to a boy of twelve the 
cares of his elders pass in spheres to which he has 
little or no access. In spite of his knowledge that 
their situation was desperate, the couple who had 
adopted him were mighty beings to Tom Quidmore, 
with resources to meet all needs. To be so went with 
being grown up and, in a general way, with being 
independent. 

Their unbosomings worried him; they did not do 
more. When they were over he could dismiss them 
from his mind. His own concerns, his lessons, his 
games, his friends and enemies in school, and the 
vague objective of becoming “something big,” were 
his matters of importance. Martin and Anna Quid- 
more cared for him so much, though each with a dash 


120 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of selfishness, that his inner detachment from them 
both would have caused them pain. 

And yet it was because of this detachment that he 
was able, in some sense, to get through the winter 
happily. Whatever might have hurt him most passed 
on the kind of Mount Olympus where grown-up peo¬ 
ple had their incredible interests. Told, as he always 
was, that he couldn’t understand them, he was willing 
to drop them at that till they were forced on him 
again. As spring was passing into summer they were 
forced on him less persistently; and then one day, 
quite unexpectedly, he struck the beginning of the end. 

It was a Saturday. As there was no school that 
day he had driven in on the truck with his father, to 
market a load of lettuce and early spinach. On return¬ 
ing through Bere in the latter part of the forenoon, 
Quidmore stopped at the druggist’s. 

“Jump down and have an ice cream soda. I’ll leave 
the lorry here, and come back to you. Errand to do 
in the village.” 

The words had been repeated so often that for 
these excursions they had come to be a formula. By 
this time Tom knew the errand to be at Bertha’s 
house, which was indirectly opposite. Seated at a 
table in the window, absorbing his cool, flavored 
drink through a pair of straws, he could see his father 
run up the steps and enter, running down again when 
he came out. Further than the fact that there was 
something regrettable in the visit, something to be 
concealed when he went home, the boy’s mind did not 
work. 

The tragedy of that morning was that, as he was 


121 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


enjoying himself thus, the runabout, driven by one of 
the hired men, glided up to the door, and Mrs. Quid- 
more, dressed for shopping, and very alert, sprang out. 
As she rarely came into Bere, and almost never in the 
morning when she had her work to do, Tom’s surprise 
was tinged at once with fear. Recognizing the lorry, 
Mrs. Quidmore rushed into the drug store. Except 
for the young man, wearing a white coat, who tended 
it, the long narrow slit was empty. As he peeped 
above his glass, with the two straws between his lips, 
Tom saw the wrath of the wronged when close on the 
track of the wrong-doer. Wheeling round, she caught 
him looking conscious and guilty. 

“Oh! So you’re here? Where is he?” 

Tom answered truthfully. “He said he had an 
errand to do. He didn’t tell me what it was.” 

“And is he coming back for you here ?” 

“He said he would.” 

“Then I’ll wait.” 

To wait she sat down at Tom’s side, having Ber¬ 
tha’s house within range. Whether she suspected any¬ 
thing or not Tom couldn't tell, since he hardly sus¬ 
pected anything himself. That there was danger in 
the air he knew by the violence with which she rejected 
his proposal to refresh herself with ice cream. 

“There he is!” 

They watched him while he came down the steps, 
hesitated a minute, and turned in the direction away 
from where they were waiting. Tom understood this 
move. 

“He’s going to Jenkins’s about that new tire.” 


122 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


As she jumped to her feet her movements had a 
fierceness of activity he had never before seen in her. 

“That’s all I want. Pm goin’ back. Don’t you say 
you seen me, or that I’ve been over here at all.” 

Hurrying to the street and springing into the car, 
she bade the hired man turn round again for home. 

What happened between that Saturday and the next 
Tom never knew exactly. A few years later, when 
his powers of deduction had developed, he was able 
to surmise; but beyond his own experience he had no 
accurate information. That there were bitter quar¬ 
rels he inferred from the sullenness they left behind; 
but he never witnessed them. Not having witnessed 
them, he had little or no sense of a strain more serious 
than usual. 

On the next Saturday afternoon he was crouched in 
the potato field, picking off the ugly reddish bugs and 
killing thern^ Suddenly he heard himself called. On 
rising and looking round he found the runabout car 
stopped in the road, and Billy Peet, one of the hired 
men, beckoning him to approach. Brushing his hands 
against each other, he stepped carefully over the rows 
of young potatoes, and was soon in the roadway. 

“Get in,” Billy Peet ordered, briefly. “The boss 
sent me over to fetch you.” 

“Sent you over to fetch me—■in the machine? 
What’s up?” His eye fell on a small straw suitcase in 
the back of the car. “What’s that for?” 

“Get in, and I’ll tell you as we go along.” Tom 
clambered in beside the driver. “Mis’ Quidmore’s 
sick.” 

“What’s the matter with her?” 


123 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’d’n know. Awful sick, they say.” 

When they passed the Quidmore entrance without 
turning in Tom began to be startled. “Say! Where 
we going?” 

“You’re not going home. Doctor don’t want you 
there. Boss telephoned over to Mrs. Tollivant, and 
she’s goin’ to keep you till Mis’ Quidmore’s better—or 
somethin’.” 

The boy was not often resentful, but he did resent 
being trundled about like a package. If his mother 
was sick his place was at home. He could light the 
fire, bring in the water from the well, and do the 
score of little things for which a small boy can be 
useful. To be shunted off like this, as if he could 
only be an additional care, was an indignity to the 
thirteen years he was now supposed to have attained 
to. But what could he do? Protest was useless. 
There was nothing for it but to go where he was 
driven, like Geraldine or the dilapidated car. 

And yet at Harfrey he settled down among the 
Tollivants naturally. No State ward having suc¬ 
ceeded him, his room under the eaves was still vacant. 
Once within its familiar shelter, he soon began to feel 
as if he had never been away. The family welcomed 
him with the shades of warmth which went with their 
ages and characters—Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant over¬ 
coming their repugnance to a born waif with that 
Christian charity which doubtless is all the nobler 
for being visibly against the grain; Art, now a 
swaggering fellow of sixteen, with patronizing good 
nature; Cilly, who affected baby-blue ribbons on a 
blond pigtail, with airs and condescension; Bertie, the 

124 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


cripple, with satiric cordiality. If it was not exactly 
a home-coming, it was at least as good as a visit to old 
friends. He was touched by being included almost as 
a member of the family in Mr. Tollivant’s evening 
prayer. 

“And, O Heavenly Father, take this young wan¬ 
derer as Thy child, even as we offer him a shelter. 
Visit not Thine anger upon him, lest he be tempted 
overmuch.” 

At the thought of being tempted overmuch Tom 
felt a pleasing sense of importance. It offered, too, a 
loophole for excuse in case he should fall. If God 
didn’t/intervene on his behalf, easing temptation up, 
then God would be responsible. And yet, such was 
the lack of fairness he was bidden to see in God, He 
would knock a fellow down and then punish him when 
he tumbled. 

In the midst of these reflections a thought of the 
Quidmore household choked him with unexpected 
homesickness. The people who had been kind to him 
were in trouble, and he was not there! He wondered 
what they would do without him. He could some¬ 
times catch the man’s cruelties and turn them into 
pleasantries before they reached the wife. He could 
sometimes forestall the wife’s complaints and twist 
them into little mollifying compliments. Would there 
be anyone to do that now? Would they keep the 
peace? He wished Mr. Tollivant would pray for 
them. He tried to pray for them himself, but, as with 
his effort of the previous year, the right kind of words 
would not come. If only God could be addressed 
without so much Thee and Thou! If only He could 

125 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


read a little boy’s heart without calling for fine lan¬ 
guage! For lack of fine language he had to remain 
dumb, leaving God, who might possibly have helped 
Martin and Anna Quidmore, with no information 
about them. 

Nevertheless, with the facile emotions of youth, a 
half hour later he was playing checkers with Bertie, 
in full enjoyment of the game. He slept soundly 
that night, and on Sunday fell into the old routine of 
church and Sunday school. Monday and Tuesday 
bored him, because for most of the day school claimed 
the children; but when they came home, and played 
and squabbled as usual, life took on its old zest. Only 
now and then did the thought of the sick woman and 
the lonely man sweep across him in a spasm of pain; 
after which he could forget them and be cheerful. 

But on Wednesday forenoon, as he was turning 
away from watching the Plymouth Rocks pecking at 
their feed, his father arrived in the old runabout. 
Dashing up the hill, Tom reached the back door in 
time to see him enter by the front. 

“How’s ma?” 

He got no answer, because Ouidmore followed Mrs. 
Tollivant into the front parlor, where they shut the 
door. In anticipation of being taken home, the boy 
ran up to his room and packed his bag. 

“How’s ma?” 

He called out the question from halfway down the 
stairs. Quidmore, emerging from the parlor with 
Mrs. Tollivant, ignored it again. Bidding good-by to 
his hostess and thanking her for taking in the boy, he 
went through these courtesies with a nervous anxiety 

126 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


almost amounting to anguish to convince her of the 
truth of something he had said. 

‘‘How’s ma?” 

They were in the car at last so that he could no 
longer be denied. 

“She’s—she’s—not there.” 

All the events of the past year focussed themselves 
into the question that now burst on Tom’s lips. “Is 
she—dead?” 

The lisping voice was sorrowful. “She was buried 
yesterday.” 

With his habit of thinking twice, the boy asked 
nothing more. Having asked nothing at the minute, 
he felt less inclined to ask anything as they drove 
onward. Something within him rejected the burden 
of knowing. While he would not hold himself aloof, 
he would not involve himself more than events in¬ 
volved him according as they fell out. His reasoning 
was obscure, but his instincts, grown self-protective 
from necessity, were positive. Whatever had hap¬ 
pened, whatever was to be right and wrong to other 
people, his own motive must be loyalty. 

“I’ve got to stick to him,” he was saying to him¬ 
self. “He’s been awful good to me. In a kind of a 
way he’s my father. I must stand by him, and see him 
through, just as if I was his son.” 

It was his first grown-up resolution. 


127 


XVII 


G ROWN-UP life began at once. His chief care 
hitherto had been as to what others would do 
for him; now he was preoccupied with what he could 
do for some one else. It was a matter of watching, 
planning, cheering, comforting, and as he expressed it 
to himself, of bucking up. Of bucking up especially 
he was prodigal. The man had become as limp as on 
the day when he had thrown himself face downward 
in the grass. Mad once with desire to act, he was 
terrified now at what he had done. Though, as far 
as Tom could judge, no one blamed or suspected him, 
there was hardly a minute in the day in which he did 
not betray himself. He betrayed himself to the boy 
even if to no one else, though betraying himself in 
such a way that there was nothing definite to take hold 
of. “I’m sure—and yet I’m not sure,” was Tom’s 
own summing up. He stressed the fact that he was 
not sure, and in this he was helped by the common 
opinion of the countryside. 

Toward the bereaved husband and his adopted son 
this was sympathetic. The woman had always been 
neurasthenic, slipshod, and impossible. With a wife 
to help him, Martin Quidmore could have been a 
success as a market gardener as easily as anybody 
else. As it was, he would get over the shock of this 
tragedy and find a woman who would be the right 
kind of mother to a growing boy. Here, the mention 

128 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of Bertha was with no more than the usual spice of 
village scandal, tolerant and unresentful. 

Of all this Tom was aware chiefly through the 
observations of Blanche, the colored woman who came 
in by the day to do the housework. 

“Law, Mr. Tom, yo’ pappa don’t need to feel so 
bad. Nobody in this yere town what blame him, not 
a little mite. Po’ Mis’ Quidmo’, nobody couldn’t 
please her nohow. Don’t I know ? Ain’t I wash her, 
and iron her, and do her housecleanin’, ever since 
she come to this yere community, and Mr. Quidmo’ 
he buy this yere lot off old Aaron Bidbury? No, suhj 
Nobody can’t tell me! Them there giddy things 
what nobody can’t please ’em they can’t please their- 
selves, and some day they go to work and do somefin’ 
despe’ate, just like po’ Mis’ Quidmo’. A little cup o’ 
tea, she take. No mo’n that. See, boy! I keep that 
there brown teapot, what look as innocent as a baby, 
all the time incriminated to her memo’y.” 

Nevertheless, Tom found his father obsessed by 
fear, with nothing to be afraid of. The obsession had 
shown itself as soon as they entered the house on their 
return from Harfrey. He was afraid of the house, 
afraid of the kitchen especially. When Gimlets 
barked he jumped, cursing the dog for its noise. 
When a buggy drove up to the door he peeped out at 
the occupant before showing himself to the neighbor 
coming to offer his condolences. If the telephone 
rang Tom hastened to answer it, knowing that it set 
his father shivering. 

As evening deepened on that first Wednesday, they 
kept out of doors as late as possible, the boy chatter- 

129 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


ing to the best of his ability. When obliged to go in, 
Quidmore tried to say with solicitude on Tom’s 
behalf: 

“Expect you’ll be lonesome now with only the two 
of us in the house. Better come and sleep in the other 
bed in my room.” 

The boy was about to reply that he was not lone¬ 
some, and preferred his own bed, when he caught the 
dread behind the invitation. 

“All right, dad, I’ll come. Sleep there every night. 
Then I won’t be scared.” 

About two in the morning Tom was wakened by a 
shout. “Hell! Hell! Hell!” 

Jumping from his own bed, he ran to the other. 
“Wake up, dad! Wake up!” 

Quidmore woke, confused and trembling. “Wha’ 
matter?” His senses returning, he spoke more dis¬ 
tinctly. “Must have had a nightmare. God! Turn 
on the light. Hate bein’ in the dark. Now get back 
to bed. All right again.” 

The next day both were picking strawberries. It 
was not Quidmore’s custom to pick strawberries, but 
he seemed to prefer a task at which he could crouch, 
and be more or less out of sight. Happening to 
glance up, he saw a stranger coming round the duck 
pond. 

“Who’s that ?” he snapped, in terror. 

Tom ran to the stranger, interviewed him, and 
ran back again. “It’s an agent for a new kind of 
fertilizer.” 

“Tell him I don’t want it and to get to hell out of 
this.” 


130 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

“You’d better see him. Pie'll think it queer if you 
don’t.” 

It was the spur he needed. He couldn’t afford to 
be thought queer. He saw the agent, Tom acting as 
go-between and interpreter. 

To act as go-between and interpreter became in a 
measure the boy’s job. Being so near the holidays, he 
did not return to school, and freed from school, he 
could give all his time to helping the frightened 
creature to seem competent in the eyes of his custom¬ 
ers and hired men. Not that he succeeded. None 
knew better than the hired men that the place was, as 
they put it, all in the soup; none were so quick to fall 
away as customers who were not getting what they 
wanted. When the house was tumbling about their 
heads one little boy’s shoulder could not do much as a 
prop; but what it could do he offered. 

He offered it with a gravity at which the men 
laughed good-naturedly behind his back. They took 
his orders solemnly, and thought no more about them. 
For a whole week nothing went to market. The 
dealers whom they supplied complained by telephone. 
Billy Peet and himself got a load of “truck” into town, 
only to be told that their man had made other arrange¬ 
ments. To meet these conditions Quidmore had 
spurts of energy, from which he backed down gib¬ 
bering. 

Taking his courage in both hands, the boy went to 
see Bertha. Never having been face to face with her 
before, he found her of the type of beauty best appre¬ 
ciated where the taste is for the highly blown. She 
received him with haughty surprise and wonder, not 

131 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


asking him to sit down. Having prepared his words, 
he recited them, though her attitude frightened him 
out of the man-of-the-world tone he had meant to 
adopt. Humbly and haltingly, he asked if she 
wouldn’t come out and help to stiffen the old man. 

“So he’s sent you, has he? Well, you can go back 
and say that Eve no reply except the one Eve given 
him. All is over between us. Tell him that if he 
thinks that that was the way to win me he’s very 
gravely mistook. I know what’s happened as positive 
as if I was a jury, and I shall never pardon it. Silence 
I shall keep, but that is all he can ask of me. He’s 
made me talked about when he shouldn’t ought to ov, 
ignoring that a woman, and especially a widow—” her 
voice broke—“has nothing but her reputation. Go 
back and tell him that if he tries to force my door he’ll 
find it double-barred against him.” 

Tom went back but said nothing. There was no 
need for him to say anything, since his life began at 
once to take another turn. 

School holidays having begun, he was free in fact 
as well as in name. It was on a Thursday that his 
father came to him with the kind of proposal which 
always excites a small boy. 

“Say, boy, what you think of a little trip down to 
Wilmington, Delaware, you and me? Go off to¬ 
morrow and get back by Tuesday. Ed see my sister, 
and it’d do me good.” 

The prospect seemed to have done him good 
already. A new life had come to him. He went 
about the olace giving orders for the few days of his 
absence, with particular instructions to Diggory and 

132 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Blanche as to Geraldine, and the disposal of the milk. 
They started on their journey in the morning. 

It was one of those mornings in June when every 
blessed and beautiful thing seems poured on the earth 
at once. As between five and six Billy Peet drove 
them over to take the train at Harfrey, light, birds, 
trees, flowers, meadows, dew, would have thrilled 
them to ecstasy if they had not been used to them. 
For the first time in weeks Tom saw his father smile. 
It was a smile of relief rather than of pleasure, but it 
was better than his look of woe. 

The journey wakened memories. Not since Mrs. 
Crewdson had brought him out to place him as a State 
ward with Mrs. Tollivant had he gone into the city 
by this route. He had gone in by the motor truck 
often enough; but this line that followed the river 
was haunted still by the things he had outlived. He 
was not sorry to have known them, though glad that 
they were gone. He was hardly sorry even for the 
present, though doubtful as to how it was going to 
turn out. Vaguely and not introspectively, he was 
shocked at himself, that he should be sitting there with 
a man who had done what he felt pretty sure this man 
had done, and that he should feel no horror. But he 
felt none. He assured himself of that. He could 
sleep with him by night, and work and eat with him 
by day, with no impulse but to shield a poor wretch 
who had made his own life such a misery. 

“I’ve got to do it,” he said to himself, in a kind of 
self-defense. “I don’t know he did it—not for sure, 
I don’t. And if nobody else tries to find out, why 
should I, when he’s been so awful nice to me?” 

133 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He watched a steamer plowing her way southward 
in the middle of the stream. He liked her air of quiet 
self-possession and of power. He wondered whence 
she was coming, whither she was going, and what she 
was doing it for. He couldn’t guess. 

“That’d be like me,” he said, silently, “sailing from 
I don’t know where—sailing to I don’t know 
where-” 

Ten years later he finished this thought, repeating 
exactly the same words. Just now he couldn’t finish 
anything, because there was so much to see. Little 
towns perched above little harbors. Fishermen 
angled from little piers. A group of naked boys, 
shameless as young mermen, played in the water. On 
a rock a few yards from the shore a flock of gulls 
jostled each other for standing room. A motor boat 
puffed. Yachts rode sleepily at anchor. The car 
which, when they took it at Harfrey had been almost 
empty, was beginning to fill with the earlier hordes of 
commuters. Soon it was quite full. Soon there were 
cheery young people, most of them chewing gum, 
standing in the passageway. Having rounded the 
curve at Spuyten Duyvil, they saw the city looming 
up, white, spiritual, tremulous, through the morning 
mist. 

Up to this minute he had not thought of plans; now 
he began to wonder what they should do on reaching 
the Grand Central, where they would arrive in another 
quarter of an hour. 

“Do we go straight across to the Pennsylvania 
Station, to take the train for Wilmington, or do we 
have to wait?” 


134 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


‘Til—I'll see.” 

The answer was unsatisfactory. He looked at his 
father inquiringly. Looking at him, he was hurt to 
observe that his confidence was departing, that he was 
again like something with a broken spring. 

“Well, we’re going to Wilmington to-day, aren’t 
we?” 

“I’ll—I’ll see.” 

“But,” the boy cried in alarm, “where can we go, if 
we don’t?” 

“I—I know a place.” 

It was disappointing. The choking sensation 
which, when he was younger, used to precede tears, 
began to gather in his throat. Having heard so much 
from Mrs. Quidmore of the glories of Wilmington, 
Delaware, he saw it as a city of palaces, of exquisite, 
ladylike maidens, of noble youths, of aristocratic 
joyousness. Moreover, he had been told that to get 
there you went under the river, through a tunnel so 
deep down in the earth that you felt a distressful 
throbbing in the head. The postponement of these 
experiences even for a day was hard to submit to. 

In the Grand Central his father was in a mood he 
had never before seen. It was a dark mood, at once 
decided and secretive. 

“Come this way.” 

This way was out into Forty-second Street. With 
their suitcases in their hands, they climbed into a street 
car going westward. Westward they went, changing 
to another car going southward, under the thunder of 
the elevated, in Ninth Avenue. At Fourteenth Street 
they got out again. Tom recognized the neighbor- 

135 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


hood because of its nearness to the great markets to 
which they sometimes brought supplies. But they 
avoided the markets, making their way between drays, 
round buildings in course of demolition, through 
gangs of children wooing disaster as they played in 
the streets. In the end they turned out of the tumult 
to find themselves in a placid little backwater of the 
“old New York” of the early nineteenth century. 
Reading the sign at the corner Tom saw that it was 
Jane Street. 

Jane Street dates from a period earlier than the 
development of that civic taste which gives to all 
New York north of Fourteenth Street the picturesque¬ 
ness of a sum in simple arithmetic. Jane Street has 
atmosphere, period, chic. You know at a glance that 
the people who built these trim little red-brick houses 
still felt that impulse which first came to Manhattan 
from The Hague, to be fostered later by William and 
Mary, and finally merged in the Georgian tradition. 
Jane Street is Dutch. It has Dutch quaintness, and, 
as far as New York will permit it, Dutch cleanliness. 
It might be a byway in Amsterdam. Instead of cut- 
ing straight from the Hudson River Docks to Green¬ 
wich Avenue, it might run from a canal with barges 
on it to a field of hyacinths in bloom. 

But Tom Quidmore saw not what you and I would 
have seen, a relief from the noise and fetidness of a 
hot summer’s morning in a neighborhood reeking 
with garbage. When his heart had been fixed on that 
dream-city, Wilmington, Delaware, he found him¬ 
self in a dingy little alley. Not often querulous, he 
became so now. 


136 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“What are vve doing down here?” 

The reply startled him. “I’m—I’m sick.” 

Looking again at the man who shuffled along be¬ 
side him, he saw that his face had grown ashy, while 
his eyes, which earlier in the day had had life in them, 
were lusterless. The boy would have been frightened 
had it not been for the impulse of affection. 

“Let’s go back to Bere. Then you can have the 
doctor. I’ll get a cab and steer the whole business.” 

Without answering, Quidmore stopped at a brown 
door, level with the pavement, in a big, dim-windowed 
building, with fire escapes zigzagging down the front. 
Jane Street is not exclusively clean and trim and 
Dutch. It has lapses—here a warehouse, there a 
dwelling tumbling to decay, elsewhere a nondescript 
structure like this. It looked like a lodging house for 
sailors and dock laborers. In the basement was a 
restaurant to which you went down by steps, and bear¬ 
ing the legend Pappa’s Chop Saloon. 

While Quidmore stood in doubt as to whether to 
ring the bell or to push the door which already stood 
a little open, two men came out of the Chop Saloon 
and began to mount the steps. In faded blue overalls 
the worse for wear, they had plainly broken a day’s 
work, possibly begun at five o’clock, for a late break¬ 
fast. The one in advance, a sturdy, well-knit fellow 
of forty or forty-five, got a sinister expression from 
a black patch over his left eye. His companion was 
older, smaller, more worn by a bitter life. All the 
twists in his figure, all the soured betrayals in his 
crafty face, showed you the habitual criminal. 

None of these details was visible to Quidmore, 

TV 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


because his imagination could see only the bed for 
which he was craving. To the boy, who trusted 
everyone, they were no more than the common type 
of workman he was used to meeting in the markets. 
The fellow with the patch on his eye, making an 
estimate of the strangers as he mounted the steps, 
spoke cheerily. 

“I say, mate, what can I do for yer?” 

The voice with a vaguely English ring was not 
ungenial. Not ungenial, when you looked at it, was 
the strongly-boned face, with a ruddiness burnt to a 
coarse tan. The single gray-blue eye had the sympa¬ 
thetic gleam which often helps roguery to make itself 
excusable to people with a sense of fun. 

Quidmore muttered something about wanting to 
see Mrs. Pappa. 

“Right you are! Come along o’ me. I’ll dig the 
old gal out for yer. Expects you wants a room for 
yerself and the kid. Hi, Pappa!” 

Pappa came out of a dim, musty parlor as the witch 
who foretells bad weather appears in a mechanical 
barometer. She was like a witch, but a dark, classic 
witch, with an immemorial tradition behind her. Her 
ancestors might have fought at Marathon, or sacri¬ 
ficed to Neptune in the temple on Sunium. In Jane 
Street she was archaic, a survival from antiquity. 
Her thoughts must have been with the nymphs at 
Delphi, or following the triremes carrying the war¬ 
riors from Argolis to Troy, as silent, mysterious, 
fateful, she led the way upstairs. 

They followed in procession, all four of them. The 
doorstep acquaintances displayed a solicitude not less 

138 ' 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


than brotherly. The hall was without furniture, the 
stairs without carpet. The softwood floors, like the 
treads of the stairs, were splintered with the usage 
of many heavy heels. Where the walls bulged, 
through the pressure of jerry-built stories overhead, 
the marbled paper swelled into bosses. Tom found 
it impressive, with something of strange stateliness. 

“Yer’ll be from the country,’’ the one-eyed fellow 
observed, as they climbed upward. 

“Yes, sir,” Tom answered, civilly. “We’re on our 
way to Wilmington, Delaware, but my father felt a 
little sick.” 

“Well, he’s struck a good place to lay up in. I say, 
Pappa,” he called ahead, “seems to me as the big 
room with two beds ’d be what’d suit the gent. It’s 
next door to the barthroom, and he’ll find that con¬ 
venient. Mate,” he explained further, when they 
stood within the room with two beds, “this’ll set ye’ 
back a dollar a day in advance. That right, Pappa, 
ain’t it?” 

Pappa assenting with some antique sign, Quidmore 
drew out his pocketbook to extract the dollar. With 
no ceremonious scruples the smaller comrade craned 
his neck to appraise, as far as possible, the contents 
of the wallet. 

“Wad,” Tom heard him squirt out of the corner 
of his mouth, in the whisper of a ventriloquist. 

His friend seemed to wink behind the patch on his 
left eye* Tom took the exchange of confidence as 
a token of respect. He and his father were considered 
rich, the effect being seen in the attentions accorded 
them. This was further borne out when the genial 

139 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


one of the two rogues turned on the threshold, as his 
colleague was following Pappa downstairs. 

“Anythink I can do for yer, mate, command me. 
Name of Honeybun—Lemuel Honeybun. Honey 
Lem some of the guys calls me. I answers to it, not 
takin’ no offense like.” He pointed to the figure 
stumping down the stairs. “My friend, Mr. Goodsir. 
Him and me been pals this two year. We lives on 
the ground floor. Room back of Pappa.” 

The door closed, Tom looked round him in an 
interest which eclipsed his hopes of the tunnel. This 
was adventure. It was nearly romance. Never before 
had he stayed in a hotel. The place was not luxurious, 
but never, in the life he could remember, having 
known anything but necessity, necessity was enough. 
Moreover, the room contained a work of art that 
touched his imagination. On the bare drab mantel¬ 
piece stood the head of a Red Indian, in plaster 
painted in bronze, not unlike the mummified head of 
Rameses the Great. The boy couldn’t take his eye 
away from it. This was what you got by visiting 
strange cities more intimately than by trucking to and 
from the markets. 

Quidmore threw himself on his bed, his face buried 
in the meager pillow. He was suffering apparently 
not from pain, but from some more subtle form of 
distress. Being told that there was nothing he could 
do for the invalid, Tom sat silent and still on one of 
the two small chairs which helped out the furnishings. 
It was not boring for him to do this, because he 
swam in novelty. He recalled the steamer he had 
seen that morning, sailing from he didn’t know where, 

140 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


sailing to he didn’t know where, but on the way. He, 
too, was on the way. He was on the way to some¬ 
thing different from Wilmington, Delaware. It 
would be different from Bere. He began to wonder 
if he should ever go back to Bere. If he didn’t go 
back to Bere . . . but at this point in Tom’s dreams 
Quidmore dragged himself off the bed. 

“Let’s go down to the chop saloon, and eat.” 



XVIII 


H E was not too ill to eat, but too ill when not 
eating to stay anywhere but on his bed. He 
went back to it again, lying with his face buried in 
the pillow as before. The boy resumed his patient 
sitting. He would have been bored with it now, had 
he not had his dreams. 

All the same, it was a relief when about four 
o’clock, just as the westering sun was beginning to 
wake the Red Indian to an horrific life, Mr. Honey- 
bun, pushing the door ajar softly, peeped in with his 
good eye. 

“I say, mate!” he whispered, “wouldn’t you like 
me to take the young gent for a bit of a walk like? 
Do him good, and him a-mopin’ here all by hisself.” 

The walk meant Tom’s initiation into the life of 
cities as that life is led. Not that it went very far, 
but as far as it went it was a revelation. It took 
him from one end of Jane Street to the other, along 
the docks of the Cunard and other great lines, and 
as far as Eighth Avenue in the broad, exciting 
thoroughfare of Fourteenth Street. New York as he 
had seen it hitherto, from the front seat of a motor 
truck, had been little more entertaining than a map. 
Besides, he was only developing a taste for this sort 
of entertainment. Games, school, scraps with other 
boys, had been enough for him. Now he was waking 

142 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to an interest in places as places, in men as men, in 
differences of attitude to the drama known as life. 
In Mr. Honeybun’s attitude he grew interested es¬ 
pecially. 

“I don’t believe that nothink don’t belong to no 
one,” Tom’s guide observed, as the wealth of the city 
spread itself more splendidly. “Things is common 
proputty. Yer takes what yer can put yer ’and on.” 

“But wouldn’t you be arrested?” 

“Yer’d be arrested if yer didn’t look out; but what’s 
bein’ arrested? No more’n the measures what a lot 
of poor, frightened, silly boobs’ll take agin the strong 
man what makes ’em tremble. At least,” he added, 
as an afterthought, “not when yer conscience is clear, 
it ain’t.” 

Fascinated by this bold facing of society, Tom 
ventured on a question. “Have you ever been ar¬ 
rested, Mr. Honeybun?” 

Mr. Honeybun straightened himself to the martyr’s 
pose. “Oh, if yer puts it that way, I’ve suffered for 
my opinions. That much I’ll admit. I’m—” he 
brought out the statement proudly—“I’m one o’ them 
there socialists. You know what a socialist is, don’t 
yer?” 

Tom was not sure that he did. 

“A socialist is one o’ them fellers who whatever 
he sees knows it belongs to him if he can get ahold 
of it. It’s gettin’ ahold of it what counts. Now if 
you was to have somethink I wanted locked up in yer 
’ouse, let us say, and I was to make my way in so as 
I could take it—why, then it’d be mine. That’s the 
law o’ Gord, I believes; and I tries to live up to it.” 

143 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Enjoying a frankness which widened his horizon, 
Tom was nevertheless perplexed by it. “But wouldn’t 
that be something like burglary?” 

“Burglary is what them may call it what ain’t 
socialists; but it don’t do to hang a dog because yer’ve 
give him a bad name. A lot o’ good people’s been 
condemned that way. When I’m in court I always 
appeals to justice.” 

“And do you get it?” 

“I get men’s. I don’t get Gord’s. You see that 
apple?” They stopped before a window in Horatio 
Street where apples were displayed. “Now, do yer 
suppose that apple growed itself for any one man in 
partic’lar? No! That apple didn’t know nothink 
about men’s laws when it blossomed on a apple tree. 
It just give itself generallike to the human race. If 
you was to go in and collar that big red one, and git 
away with it, it’d be yours. Stands to reason it’d be. 
Gord’s law! But if that there policeman, a-squintin’ 
his ugly eye at us this minute—he knows Honey Lem, 
he does!—was to pull yer in, yer might git thirty 
days. Man’s law! And I’ll leave it to you which is 
best worth sufferin’ for.” 

In this philosophy of life there was something Tom 
found reasonable, and something in which he felt a 
flaw without being able to detect it. He chased it 
round and round in his thoughts as he sat through the 
long dull hours with his father. It passed the time; 
it helped him to the habit of thinking things out for 
himself. His mind being clear, and his intuitions 
acute, he could generally solve a problem not beyond 
his years. When, on the morrow, they walked in the 

144 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


cool of the day down the length of Hudson Street 
till it ends in Reade Street, Tom brought the subject 
up from another point of view. 

“But, Mr. Honeybun, suppose someone took some¬ 
thing from you? What then?” 

“He’d git it in the nut,” the socialist answered, 
tersely. “Not if there’d be two of 'em,” he added, in 
amendment. “If there’s two I don’t contend. I 
ain’t a communist.” 

“Is that what a communist is, a fellow who’ll con¬ 
tend with two?” 

“A communist is a socialist what’ll use weepons. 
If there’s somethink what he thinks is his in any¬ 
body’s ’ouse, he’ll go armed, and use vi’lence. They 
never got that on me. I never ’urt nobody, except 
onst I hits a footman, what was goin’ to grab me, a 
wee little knock on the ’ead with a silver soup ladle I 
ad in me ’and and lays ’im out flat. Didn’t do him 
no ’arm, not ’ardly any. That was in England. But 
them days is over, since I lost my eye. Makes yer 
awful easy spotted when yer’ve lost a eye.” 

“How did you lose it, Mr. Honeybun?” 

“I lost it a-savin’ of the life of a beautiful young 
lady. ’Twas quite a tale.” The boy looked up ex¬ 
pectantly while his friend thought out the details. 
“I was footin’ it onst from New Haven to New York, 
and I’d got to a pretty little town as they call Old 
Lyme. Yer see, I’d been doin’ a bit o’ time at New 
Haven—awful ’ard on socialists they was in New 
Haven in them days—and when I gits out I was a bit 
stoney-broke till I’d picked up somethink else. Well 
there I was, trampin’ it through Old Lyme, and I’d 

145 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


got near to the bridge what crosses the river they’ve 
got there—the Connecticut I think it is—and what 
should I see but a ’orse what a young lady was drivin’ 
come over the bridge like mad. The young lady she 
was tuggin’ at the reins and a-hollerin’ like blazes 
for some one to save her life. I ain’t no ’ero, kid. 
Don’t go for to think that I’m a-sayin’ that I am. 
But what’s a man to do when he sees a beautiful 
young lady in danger o’ bein’ killed?” He paused 
to take the bodily postures with which he stopped the 
runaway. “And the tip of the shaft,” he ended, “it 
took me right in the eye, and put it out. But, Lord, 
what’s a eye, even to a Socialist, when yer can do 
somethink for a feller creeter?” 

Tom gaped in admiration. “I suppose it hurt 
awful.” ' ! 

“Was in ’orspital three months,” the hero said, 
quietly. “Young lady, she visits me reg’lar, calls me 
her life-saver, and every name like that, and kind o’ 
clings to me. But, Lord, marriage ain’t never been 
much of a fancy to me. Ties a man up, and I likes 
to be free, except when I’m sufferin’ for socialism. 
Besides, if I was to marry every woman what I’ve 
saved their lives I’d be one o’ them Normans by this 
time. When yer wants company a good pal ’ll be 
faithfuller than a wife, and nag yer a lot less.” 

“Mr. Goodsir’s your pal, ain’t he, Mr. Honeybun?” 

“Yes, and I’m sick of him. He don’t develop. He 
ain’t got no eddication. Yer can see for yerself he 
don’t talk correct. That’s what I’ve took to in yer 
gov’nor and you, yer gentleman way o’ speakin’. Only 
yer needn’t go for to tell yer old man all what I’ve 

146 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


been a-gassin’ of to you. I can see he’s what they 
call conservative. He wouldn’t understand. You’re 
the younger generation, mind more open like. You 
and me’d make a great team if we was ever to work 
together.” 

With memories of his mother in his mind, Tom 
answered sturdily, “I wouldn't be a socialist, not for 
anything you could offer me.” 

They left it at that. Mr. Honeybun was content 
to point out the historic sites known to him as they 
turned homeward. There was the house where a 
murder had been committed; the store where a big 
break had been pulled off; a private detective’s resi¬ 
dence. 

“Might go out agin some day, if yer pop don’t 
mind it,” he suggested, when they had reached their 
own hallw r ay. “I gits the time in the late afternoon. 
Yer see, our job at the market begins early and ends 
early, and lately—” there was a wistful note—“well, 
I feels kind o’ fed up with the low company Goodsir 
keeps. Every kind o’ joint and dive and—and— 
Chinamen—and—” Out of respect for the boy he 
held up the description. “You’d ’ardly believe it, but 
an innercent little walk like what we’ve just took, 
why, it’ll do me as much good as a swig o’ water 
when you wake up about three in the mornin’, with 
yer tongue ’angin’ out like a leather strap, after a 
three-days’ spree.” 

Unable to get the full force of this figure, Tom 
thanked his guide politely, and was bounding up the 
stairs two steps at a time, when the man who stood 
watching him spoke again. 

147 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“If Pd ever a-thought that Pd ’a had a kid like 
you, it’d ’a’ been pretty near worth giftin' married 
for.” 

Tom could only turn with one of those grins which 
showed his teeth, making his eyes twinkle with a clear 
blue light, when adequate words for kindness wouldn't 
come to him. 


148 


XIX 


PHE days settled into a routine. When they rose 
in the morning a colored woman “did” their 
room while they went down to the chop saloon for 
breakfast. Returning, Quidmore threw himself on 
his bed again. He did this after each meal, poking 
his nose deep into the limp pillow. Hardly ever 
speaking, he now and then uttered a low moan. 

Tom watched patiently, ready to tell him the time 
or bring him a drink of water. When the day grew 
too hot he fanned him with an old newspaper. 

“Why don’t we go home, dad?” he asked anxiously 
on the third day. “I could get you there as easy as 
anything.” 

“I’m not well enough.” 

“You don’t seem very sick to me. You don’t 
have any pain and you can eat all right.” 

“It isn’t that kind of bein’ sick. It’s—” he sought 
for a name—“it’s like nervous prostration.” 

More nearly than he knew he had named his 
malady. In his own words, he was all in; and he 
was all in to the end of the letter of the term. Of 
that moral force which is most of what any man has 
to live upon some experience had drained him. He 
had spent his gift of vitality. All in was precisely 
the phrase to apply to him. He had cashed the last 
cent of whatever he had inherited or saved in the 
way of inner strength, and now he could not go on. 

149 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“What’s the good of it anyhow?” he asked of Tom 
in the night. “There’s nothin’ to it, not when you 
come to think of it. You run after something as if 
you couldn’t live without it; and then when you get 
it you curse your God that you ever run.” 

Tom shuddered in his bed, but he was used to doing 
that. There was hardly a night when he was not 
wakened by a nightmare. If it was not by a night¬ 
mare, it was by the soft complaining voice. 

“Are you awake, Tom?” 

“Yes, dad. Can I get you anything?” 

“No; I only wanted to know if you was awake.” 

Tom kept awake as long as he could, because he 
knew the poor wretch was afraid of lying sleepless 
in the dark. To keep him awake, perhaps for less 
selfish reasons, too, the soft voice would take this 
opportunity of giving him advice. 

“Don’t you ever go to wanting anything too much, 
boy. That’s what’s done for me. You can want 
things if you like; but one of the tricks in the game 
is to know how to be disappointed. I never did know, 
not even when I was a little chap. If I cried for the 
moon I wouldn’t stop till I got it. When I was about 
as old as you, not gettin’ what I wanted made me 
throw a fit. If I couldn’t get things by fair means 
I had to get ’em by foul; but I got ’em. It don’t do 
you no good, boy. If I could go back again over the 
last six months . . .” 

For fear of a confession Tom stopped his ears, but 
no confession ever came. The tortured soul could 
dribble its betrayals, but it couldn’t face itself squarely. 

Ho 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Look out for women/’ he said, gently, on another 
night. “You’re old enough now to know how they’ll 
play the Dutch with you. When I was your age there 
was nothing I didn’t understand, and I guess it’s the 
same with you. Don’t ever let ’em get you. They 
got me before I was—well, I don’t hardly know what 
age I was, but it was pretty young. Look out for 
’em, boy. If you ever damn your soul for one of 
’em, she’ll do you dirt in the end. If it hadn’t been 
for her . . 

To keep this from going further, the boy broke 
in with the first subject he could think of. “I wonder 
if they’ll remember to pick the new peas. They’ll be 
ready by this time. Do you suppose they’ll . . ?’’ 

“I don’t care a hang what they do.” After a brief 
silence he continued: “I’d ’a left the place to you, 
boy, only my brother-in-law, my sister’s husband, has 
a mortgage on the place that’d eat up most of the 
value, so I’ve left it to her. That’ll fix ’em both. I 
wish I could ’a done more for you.” 

“You’ve done a lot for me, as it is.” 

“You don’t know.” 

There was another silence. It might have lasted 
ten minutes. The boy was falling once more into a 
doze when the soft voice lisped again, 

“Tom.” 

He did his best to drag himself back from sleep. 
“Yes, dad? Do you want to know what time it is? 
I’ll get up and look.” 

“No, stay where you are. There’s somethin’ I 
want to say. I’ve been a skunk to you.” 

“Oh, cut it, dad . . 

15 1 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I won’t cut it. I want to say it out. When I— 
when I first took you, it wasn’t—it wasn’t so much 
that I’d took a fancy to you . . 

“I know it wasn’t, dad. You wanted a boy to pick 
the berries. Let’s drop it there.” 

But the fevered conscience couldn’t drop it there. 
“Yes; at first. And then—and then it come into my 
mind that you might be—might be the one that’d do 
somethin’ I didn’t want to do myself. I thought— 
I thought that if you done it we might get by on it. 
We got by on it all right—or up to now we’ve got by 
—but I didn’t get real fond of you till—till . . .” 

“Oh, dad, let’s go to sleep.” 

“All right. Let’s. I just wanted to say that 
much. I was glad afterward that . . 

The boy breathed heavily, pretending that he was 
asleep. He was soon asleep in earnest, and for the 
rest of the night was undisturbed. In the morning 
his father didn’t get up, and Tom went down to the 
chop saloon to bring up something that would serve 
as breakfast. He did the same at midday, and the 
same in the evening. It was a summer’s evening, 
with a long twilight. As it began to grow dark Quid- 
more seemed to rouse himself. He needed tooth 
paste, shaving cream, other small necessities. Sitting 
up on the bed, he made out a list of things, giving 
Tom the money with which to pay for them. If he 
went to the pharmacy in Hudson Street he would be 
back in half an hour. 

“All right, dad. I know the way. I’m an old 
hand in New York by this time.” 


T - 2 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He was at the door when Quidmore called him 
back. 

“Say, boy. Give us a kiss.” 

Tom was stupefied. He had kissed his adopted 
mother often enough, but he had never been asked to 
do this. Quidmore laughed, pulling him close. 

“Ah, come along! I don't ask you often. You’re 
a fine boy, Tom. You must know as well as I do 
what’s been . . .” 

The words were suspended by a hug; but once he 
was free Tom fled away like a small young wild 
thing, released from human hands. Having reached 
the street, he began to feel frightened, prescient, 
awed. Something was going to happen, he could not 
imagine what. He made his purchases hurriedly, and 
then delayed his return. He could be tender with 
the man; he could be loving; but he couldn’t share his 
secrets. 

But he had to go back. In the dim upper hall out¬ 
side the door he paused to pump up courage to go in. 
He was not afraid in the common way of fear; he 
was only overcome with apprehension at having a 
knowledge he rejected forced on him. 

The first thing he noticed was that no light came 
through the crack beneath the door. The room was 
apparently dark. That was strange because his father 
dreaded darkness, except when he was there to keep 
him company. He crept to the door and listened. 
There was no sound. He pushed the door open. 
The lights were out. In panic at what he might dis¬ 
cover, he switched on the electricity. 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


But he only found the room empty. That was so 
far a relief. His father had gone out, and would be 
back again. Closing the door behind him, he advanced 
into the room. 

It seemed more than empty. It felt abandoned, 
as if something had gone which would not return. 
He remembered that sensation afterward. He stood 
still to wonder, to conjecture. The Red Indian 
gleamed with his bronze leer. 

The next thing the boy noticed was an odd little 
pile on the table. It was money—notes. On top of 
the notes there was silver and copper. He stooped 
over them, touching them with his forefinger, pushing 
them. He pushed them as he might have pushed an 
insect to see whether or not it was alive. 

Lastly he noticed a paper, on which the money had 
been placed. There was something scribbled on it 
with a pencil. He held it under the dim lamp. “For 
Tom—with a real love.” 

The tears gushed to his eyes, as they always did 
when people showed that they loved him. But he 
didn’t actually cry; he only stood still and wondered. 
He couldn’t make it out. That his father should have 
gone out and forgotten all his money was unusual 
enough, but that he should have left these penciled 
words was puzzling. It was easy to count the money. 
There were seven fifty-dollar bills, with twenty-eight 
dollars and fifty-four cents in smaller bills and change. 
He seemed to remember that his father had drawn 
four hundred dollars for the Wilmington expenses, 
with a margin for purchases. 

154 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He stood wondering. He could never recall how 
long he stood wondering. The rest of the night be¬ 
came more or less a blank to him; for, to the best of 
the boy’s knowledge, the man who had adopted him 
was never seen again. 


XX 


O the best of the boy’s knowledge the man who 



JL had adopted him was never seen again; but it 
took some time to assume the fact that he was dead. 
Visitors to New York often dived below the surface, 
to come up again a week or ten days later. Their 
experience in these absences they were not always 
eager to discuss. 

“Why, I’ve knowed ’em to stay away that long 
as yer'd swear they’d been kidnaped,” Mr. Honey- 
bun informed the boy. “He’s on a little time; that’s 
all. Nothink but nat’rel to a man of his age—and a 
widower—livin’ in the country—when he gits a bit 
of freedom in the city.” 

“Yes, but what’ll he do for money?” 

There was this point of view, to be sure. Mr. 
Goodsir suggested that Quidmore had had more 
money still, that he had only left this sum to cover 
Tom’s expenses while he was away. 

“And listen, son,” he continued, kindly, “that’s a 
terr’ble big wad for a boy like you to wear on his 
person. Why, there’s guys that free-quents this very 
house that’d rob and murder you for half as much, 
and never drop a tear. Now here I am, an old trusty 
man, accustomed to handle funds, and not sneak 
nothin’ for myself. If I could be of any use to you 
in takin’ charge of it like . . .” 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Me and you’ll talk this over, later,” Mr. Honey- 
bun intervened, tactfully. “The kid don’t need no one 
to take care of his cash when his father may skin 
home again before tonight. Let’s wait a bit. If he’s 
goin’ to trust anybody it’ll be us, his next of kin in 
this ’ere 'ouse, of course. That’d be so, kiddy, 
wouldn’t it?” 

Tom replied that it would be so, giving them to 
understand that he counted on their good offices. For 
the present he was keeping himself in the non-com¬ 
mittal attitude natural to suspense. 

“You see,” he explained, looking from one to 
another, with his engaging candor, “I can’t do any¬ 
thing but just wait and see if he’s coming back again, 
at any rate, not for a spell.” 

The worthies going to their work, the interview 
ended. At least, Mr. Goodsir went to his work, 
though within a few minutes Mr. Honeybun was back 
in Tom’s room again. 

“Say, kid; don’t you let them three hundred bucks 
out’n yer own ’and. I can’t stop now; but when I 
blow in to eat at noon I’ll tell yer what I’d do with 
’em, if you was me. Keep ’em buttoned up in yer 
inside pocket; and don’t ’ang round in this old hut 
any more’n you can help till I come back and git you. 
Yer never knows who’s on the same floor with yer; 
but out in the street yer’ll be safe.” 

Out in the street he kept to the more populous 
thoroughfares, coasting the line of docks especially. 
He liked them. On the facades of the low buildings 
he could read names which distilled romance into 
syllables—New Orleans, Savannah, Galveston, Texas, 

LS7 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Arizona, Oklahoma. He had always been fond of 
geography. It opened up the world. It told of coun¬ 
tries and cities he would one day visit, and which 
in the meantime he could dream about. Over the 
low roofs of the dock buildings he could see the tops 
Of funnels. Here and there was the long black flank 
of a steamer at its pier. There were flags flying from 
one masthead or another, while exotic seafaring types 
slipped in and out amid the crush of vehicles, or 
dodged the freight train aimlessly shunting up and 
down. The movement and color, the rumble of deep 
sound, the confused world-wide purpose of it all, the 
knowledge that he himself was so insignificant a figure 
that no robber or murderer would suspect that he had 
all that money buttoned against his breast, dulled his 
mind to his desolation. 

He tried to keep moving so as to make it seem 
to a suspicious populace that he was an errand boy; 
but now and then the sense of his loneliness smote 
him to a standstill. He would wonder where he was 
going, and what he was going for, as he wondered 
the same thing about the steamer on the Hudson. 
Like her, he seemed to be afloat. She, of course, had 
her destination; but he had nothing in the world to 
tie up to. He seemed to have heard of a ship that 
was always sailing—sailing—sailing—sailing—with 
never a port to have come out of, and never a port 
in view, 

The Church of the Sea! 

He read the words on the corner of a big white 
building where Jane Street flows toward the docks. 
He read them again. He read them because he liked 

158 




“that’s a terr’bi.e big wad for a boy like you to wear” 













THE HAPPY ISLES 


their suggestions—immensity, solitude, danger per¬ 
haps, and God! 

It was queer to think of God being out there, where 
there were only waves and ships and sailors, but 
chiefly waves and a few seabirds. It recalled the 
religion of crippled Bertie Tollivant, the cynic. To 
the instructed like himself, God was in the churches 
that had steeples and pews and strawberry sociables, 
or in the parlors where they held family prayers. 
They told you that He was everywhere; but that only 
meant that you couldn’t do wrong, you couldn’t swear, 
or smoke a cigarette, or upset some householder’s 
ash-barrels, without His spotting you. Tom Quid- 
more did not believe that Mr. and Mrs. Tollivant 
would have sanctioned this Church of the Sea, where 
God was as free as wind, and over you like the sky, 
and beyond any human power to monopolize or give 
away. It made Him too close at hand, too easy to 
find, and probably much too tender toward sailors, 
who were often drunk, and homeless little boys. He 
turned away from the Church of the Sea, secretly 
envying Bertie Tollivant his graceless creed, but not 
daring to question the wisdom of adult men and 
women. 

By the steps of the chop saloon he waited for Mr. 
Honeybun, who came swinging along, a strong and 
supple figure, a little after the whistle blew at twelve. 
To the boy’s imagination, now that he had been in¬ 
formed as to his friend’s status, he looked like what 
had been defined to him as a socialist. That is, he 
had the sort of sinuosity that could slip through half¬ 
open windows, or wriggle in at coal-holes, or glide 

CS9 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


noiselessly up and down staircases. It was ridiculous 
to say it of one so bony and powerful, but the spring 
of his step was spiritlike. 

“Good for you, lad, to be waitin’! We’ll go right 
along and do it, and then it’ll be off our minds.” 

What “it” was to be, Tom had no idea. But then 
he had no suspicions. In spite of his hard child¬ 
hood, it did not occur to him that grown-up men 
would do him wrong. He had no fear of Mr. Honey- 
bun, and no mistrust, not any more than a baby in 
arms has fear or mistrust of its nurse. 

“And there’s another thing,” Mr. Honeybun 
brought up, as they went along. “It don’t seem to 
me no good for a husky boy like you to be just doin’ 
nothink, even while he’s waitin’ for his pop. I’d git 
a job, if you was me.” 

The boy said that he would gladly have a job, but 
didn’t know how to get one. 

“I’ve got one for yer if yer’ll take it. Work not 
too ’ard, and ’ll bring you in a dollar and a ’alf a 
day.” 

But “it” was the matter in hand, and presently its 
nature became evident. At the corner of Fourteenth 
Street and Eighth Avenue Mr. Honeybun pointed 
across to a handsome white-stone building, whose very 
solidity inspired confidence. Tom could read for him¬ 
self that it was a savings bank. 

“Now what I’d do if it was my wad is this. I’a 
put three hundred and twenty-five of it in that there 
bank, which’d leave yer more’n twenty-five for yer 
eddication. But yer principal, no one won’t be able 

160 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to touch it but yerself, and twice a year yer’ll be 
gettin’ yer interest piled up on top of it.” 

Tom’s heart leaped. He had long meditated on 
savings banks. They had been part of his queer 
vision. To become “something big” he would have 
to begin by opening some such account as this. With 
Mr. Ploneybun’s proposal he felt as if he had sud¬ 
denly grown taller by some inches, and older by some 
years. 

“You’ll come over with me, won’t you?” 

Mr. Honeybun demurred. “Well, yer see, kid, I’m 
a pretty remarkable character in this neighborhood. 
There’s lots knows Honey Lem; and if they was to 
see me go in with you they might think as yer 
hadn’t come by your dough quite hon—I mean, 
accordin’ to yer conscience—or they might be bad 
enough to suppose as there was a put-up job between 
us. When I puts a few dollars into my own savings 
bank—I’m a savin’ bird, I am—I goes right over to 
Brooklyn, where there ain’t no wicked mind to sus- 
peck me. So go in by yerself, and say yer wants to 
open a account. If anyone asks yer, tell him just how 
the money come to yer, and I don't believe as yer’ll 
run no chanst of no one not believin’ yer.” 

So it was done. Tom came out of the building 
with his bank book buttoned into his breast pocket, 
and a conscious enhancement of life. 

“And now,” Mr. Honeybun suggested, “we’ll make 
tracks for Pappa’s and eat.” 

The “check,” like the meal, was light, and Mr. 
Honeybun paid it. Tom protested, since he had 

161 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


money of his own, but his host took the situation 
gracefully. 

‘‘Lord love yer, kid, ain’t I yer next o’ kin, as long 
as yer guv’nor’s away? Who sh’d buy yer a lunch 
if it wasn’t me?” 

Childhood is naturally receptive. As Romulus and 
Remus took their food from a wolf when there was 
no one else to give it them, so Tom Quidmore found 
it not amazing to be nourished, first by a murderer, 
and then by a thief. It became amazing, a few years 
later, on looking back on it; but for the moment mur¬ 
derer and thief were not the terms in which he thought 
of those who had been kind to him. 

Not that he didn’t try. He tried that very after¬ 
noon. When his next o’ kin had gone back to his job 
of lifting and heaving in the Gansevoort Market, he 
returned to the empty room. It was his first return 
to it alone. When he had gone up from his breakfast 
in the chop saloon both Goodsir and Honeybun had 
accompanied him. Now the emptiness was awesome, 
and a little sinister. 

He had slept there the previous night, slept fitfully 
that is, waking every half hour to listen for the shuf¬ 
fling footstep. He heard other footsteps, dragging, 
thumping, staggering, but they always passed on to 
the story above, whence would come a few minutes 
later the sound of heavy boots thrown on the floor. 
Now and then there were curses, or male voices raised 
in a wrangle, or a few bars of a drunken song. 
During the earlier nights he had slept through these 
signals of Pappa’s hospitality, or if he had waked, he 
knew that a grown-up man lay in the other bed, so 

162 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


that he was safe. Now he could only lie and shudder, 
till the sounds died down, and silence implied safety. 
He did his best to keep awake, so as to unlock the 
door the instant he heard a knock; but in spite of his 
efforts he slept. 

This return after luncheon brought him for the 
first time face to face with his state as a reality. 
There was no one there. It was no use going back to 
Bere, because there would be no one there. Rather 
than become again a State ward with the Tollivants, 
he would sell himself to slavery. What was he to do ? 

The first thing his eye fell upon was his father’s 
suitcase, lying open on the floor beside the bed, its 
contents in disorder. It was the way Quidmore kept 
it, fishing out a shirt or a collar as he needed one. 
The futility of this clothing was what struck the boy 
now. The peculiar grief of handling the things inti¬ 
mately used by those who will never use them again 
was new to him. He had never supposed that so 
much sorrow could be stored in a soiled handkerchief. 
Stooping over the suitcase, he had accidentally picked 
one up, and burst into sudden tears. They were the 
first he had actually shed since he used to creep away 
to cry by himself in the heart-lonely life among the 
Tollivants. 

It occurred to him now that he had not cried when 
his adopted mother disappeared. He had not espe¬ 
cially mourned for her. While she had been there, 
and he was daily face to face with her, he had loved 
her in the way in which he loved so easily when any¬ 
one opened the heart to him; but she had been no 
part of his inner life. She was the cloud and sunshine 

163 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of a day, to be forgotten in the cloud and a sunshine of 
the morrow. Of the two, he grieved more for the 
man; and the man was a murderer, and probably a 
suicide. 

Sitting on the edge of his bed, he used these words 
in the attempt to work up a fortifying moral indigna¬ 
tion. It was then, too, that he called Mr. Honeybun a 
thief. He must react against these criminal associa¬ 
tions. He must stand on his own feet. He was not 
afraid of earning his own living. He had heard of 
boys who had done it at an age even earlier than 
thirteen, and had ended by being millionaires. They 
had always, however, so far as he knew, had some 
sort of ties to connect them with the body politic. 
They had had the support of families, sympathies, and 
backgrounds. They hadn't been adrift, like that 
haunting ship which never knew a port, and none but 
the God of the Sea to keep her from foundering. He 
could have believed in this God of the Sea. He 
wished there had been such a God. But the God that 
was, the God who was shut up in churches and used 
only on Sundays, was not of much help to him. Any 
help he got he must find for himself; and the first 
thing he must do would be to break away from these 
low-down companionships. 

And just as, after two or three hours of medita¬ 
tion, he had reached this conclusion, a tap at the door 
made him start. Quidmore had come back! But 
before he could spring to the door it was gently pushed 
open, and he saw the patch over the left eye. 

“Got away early, son. Now, seems to me, we 
ought to be out after them overalls." 

164 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The boy stood blank. “What overalls?” 

“Why, for yer job to-morrow. Yer can’t work in 
them good clo’es. Yer’d sile ’em.” 

In a second-hand shop, known to Honey Lem, in 
Charles Street, they found a suit of boy’s overalls not 
too much the worse for wear. Honey Lem pulled 
out a roll of bills and paid for them. 

“But I’ve got my own money, Mr. Honeybun.” 

“Dooty o’ next o’ kin, boy. I ain’t doin’ it for me 
own pleasure. Yer’ll need yer money for yer eddica- 
tion. Yer mustn’t forgit that.” 

The overalls bound him more closely to the crim¬ 
inal from whom he was trying to cut loose. More 
closely still he found himself tied by the scraps of 
talk he overheard between the former pals that eve¬ 
ning. They were on the lowest of the steps leading 
up from the chop saloon, where all three of them had 
dined. Tom, who had preceded them, stood on the 
sidewalk overhead, out of sight and yet within ear¬ 
shot. 

“I tell yer I can’t, Goody,” Mr. Honeybun was 
saying, “not as long as I’m next o’ kin to this ’ere 
kid. ’Twouldn’t be fair to a young boy for me.to 
keep no such company.” 

Mr. Goodsir made some observation the nature of 
which Tom could only infer from Mr. Honeybun’s 
response. 

“Well, don’t yer suppose it’s a damn sight ’arder 
for me to be out’n a good thing than it is for you to 
see me out’n it? I don’t go in for no renounciation. 
But when yer’ve got a fatherless kid on yer ’ands ye’ 
must cut out a lot o’ nice stuff that’ll go all right 

165 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


when yer’ve only yerself to think about. Ain’t yer a 
Christian, Goody?” 

Once more Mr. Goodsir’s response was to Tom a 
matter of surmise. 

“Well, then, Goody, if yer don’t like it yer can go 
to E and double L. What’s more, I ain’t a-goin’ to 
sleep in our own room to-night, nor any night till that 
guy comes back. I’m goin’ to sleep in the kid’s room, 
and keep him company. ’Tain’t right to leave a young 
boy all by hisself in a ’ouse like this, as full o’ toughs 
as a ward’ll be full o’ politicians.” 

Tom removed himself to a discreet distance, but the 
knowledge that the other bed in his room would not 
remain so creepily vacant was consciously a relief. 
He slept dreamlessly that night, because of his feeling 
of security. In the morning, not long after four, he 
was wakened by a hand that rocked him gently to 
and fro. 

“Come, little shaver! Time to git up! Got to be 
on yer job at five.” 

The job was in a market that was not exactly a 
market since it supplied only the hotels. Together 
with the Gansevoort and West Washington Markets, 
it seemed to make a focal point for much of the food 
on the continent of America. Railways and steamers 
brought it from ranches and farms, from plantations 
and orchards, from rivers and seas, from slaughter- 
stockades and cold-storage warehouses, from the north 
and the south and the west, from the tropics and 
farther than the tropics, to feed the vast digestive 
machine which is the basis of New York’s energies. 
Tom’s job was not hard, but it was incessant. His 

166 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


was the duty of collecting and arranging the empty 
cases, crates, baskets, and coops, which were dumped 
on the raised platform surrounding the building on 
the outside, or which cluttered the stalls within. 
Trucks and vans took them away full on one day, and 
brought them back empty on another. It was all a 
boy could do to keep them stacked, and in order, ac¬ 
cording to sizes and shapes. The sizes in the main 
were small; the shapes were squares and oblongs and 
diminishing churnlike cylinders. Nimbleness, neat¬ 
ness, and goodwill were the requisites of the task, and 
all three of them the boy supplied. 

Fatigue that night made him wakeful. His com¬ 
panion in the other bed was wakeful too. In talking 
from bed to bed Tom found it a comfort to be dealing 
with an easy conscience. Mr. Honeybun had nothing 
on his mind, nor was he subject to nightmares. 
Speculation on the subject of Quidmore’s disappear¬ 
ance, and possible fate, turned round and round on 
itself, to begin again with the selfsame guesses. 

‘‘And there’s another thing,” came from Mr. 
Honeybun. “If he don’t come back, why, you’ll come 
in for a good bit o’ proputty, won’t yer? Didn’t he 
own that market-garden place, out there on the edge 
of Connecticut?” 

“He left it to his sister. He told me that the other 
night. You see, I wasn’t his real son. I wasn’t his 
son at all till about a year ago.” 

This statement coming to Mr. Honeybun as some¬ 
thing of a shock, Tom was obliged to tell the story of 
his life to the extent that he knew it. The only de¬ 
tails that he touched on lightly were those which 

167 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


bore on the manner in which he had lost his “mudda.” 
Even now it was difficult to name her in any other 
way, because in no other way had he ever named her. 
Obliged to blur the outlines of his earliest recollec¬ 
tions, which in themselves were clear enough, his 
tale was brief. 

‘‘So yer real name is Whitelaw,” Mr. Honeybun 
commented, with interest. “I never hear that name 
but once. That was the Whitelaw baby. Ye’ll have 
heard tell o’ that?” 

Since Tom had never heard tell of the Whitelaw 
baby, the lack in his education was supplied. The 
Whitelaw baby had been taken out to the Park on a 
morning in May, and had vanished from its carriage. 
In the place where it had lain was found a waxen 
image so true in likeness to the child himself that only 
when it came time to feed him did the nurse make the 
discovery that she had wheeled home a replica. The 
mystery had been the source of nation-wide excite¬ 
ment for the best part of two years. It was talked 
of even now. It couldn’t have been more than three 
or four years earlier that Mr. Honeybun had seen a 
daily paper, bearing the headlines that Harry White- 
law had been found, selling like hotcakes to the women 
shopping in Twenty-third Street. 

“And was he?” Tom asked, beginning at last to be 
sleepy. 

“No more’n a puff of tobacker smoke when yer’d 
blowed it in the air. The father, a rich banker—a 
young chap he was, too, I believe—he offers a reward 
of fifty thousand dollars to anyone as’d put him on 
the track o’ the gang what had kidnapped the young 

168 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


’un; and every son of a gun what thought he was a 
socialist was out to win the money. This ’ere Goody, 
he had a scheme. Tried to work me in on it, and I 
don’t know but what I might a took a ’and if a chum 
o’ mine hadn’t got five year for throwin’ the same ’ook 
without no bait on it. They ’auled in another chap I 
knowed, what they was sure he had somethink to do 
with it, and tried to make him squeal; but—” A long 
breath from Tom interrupted this flow of narrative. 
“Say, kiddy, yer ain’t asleep, are yer? and me tellin’ 
yer about the Whitelaw baby?” 

“I am nearly,” the boy yawned. “Good night— 
Honey! Wake me in time in the morning.” 

“That’s a good name for yer to call me,” the next 
o’ kin commended. “I’ll always be Honey to you, and 
you’ll be Kiddy to me; and so we’ll be pals. Buddies 
they call it over here.” 

Echoes of a street brawl reached them through the 
window. Had he been alone, the country lad of thir¬ 
teen would have shivered, even though the night was 
hot. But the knowledge of this brawny companion, 
lying but a few feet away, nerved him to curl up like a 
puppy, and fall asleep trustfully. 


169 


XXI 


HE next two or three nights were occasions for 



the interchange of confidence. During the days 
the new pals saw little of each other, and sometimes 
nothing at all. With the late afternoon they could 
“clean themselves,” and take a little relaxation. For 
this there was no great range of opportunity. Relax¬ 
ation for Lemuel Honeybun had hitherto run in di¬ 
rections from which he now felt himself cut off. He 
knew of no others, while the boy knew of none of 
any kind. 

“I tell yer, Goody,” Tom overheard, through the 
open door of the room back of Pappa's, one day while 
he was climbing the stairs, “I ain't a-goin’ to go while 
I’ve got this job on me hands. The Lord knows I 
didn’t seek it. It’s just one of them things that’s 
give yer as a dooty, and I’m goin’ to put it through. 
When Quidmore’s come back, and it's all over, I’ll be 
right on the job with the old gang again; but till he 
does it’s nix. Yer can’t mean to think that I don’t 
miss the old bunch. Why, I’d give me other 


eye . . 


Tom heard no more; but the tone of regret worried 
him. True, if he wanted to break the bond this 
might be his chance. On the other hand, the thought 
of being again without a friend appalled him. While 
waiting in the hope that Quidmore might come back, 


170 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the present arrangement was at least a cosy one. 
Nevertheless, he felt it due to his spirit of independ¬ 
ence to show that he could stand alone. He waited 
till they were again lying feet to feet by the wall, and 
the air through the open window was cool enough to 
allow of their being comfortable, before he felt able 
to take an off-hand, man-to-man tone. 

“You know, Honey, if you want to beat it back to 
your old crowd, I can get along all right. Don’t hang 
round here on my account.” 

“Lord love you, Kiddy, I know how to sackerfice 
meself. If I’m to be yer next o’ kin, I’ll be it and be 
damned. Done ’arder things than this in me life, and 
pulled ’em off, too. I’ll stick to yer, kid, as long as 
yer wants me, if I never have another nice time in my 
life, and never see another quart bottle.” 

The pathos of the life for which he might be letting 
himself in turned his thoughts backward over his 
career. 

“Why, if I’d ’a stuck at not puttin’ others before 
meself I might still ’a been a gasfitter in Liverpool, 
Eng. That’s where I was born. True ’eart-of-oak 
Englishman I was. Some people thinks they can tell 
it in the way I talk. Been over ’ere so long, though, 
seems to me I ’andle the Yankee end of it pretty 
good. Englishman I met the other day—steward on 
one of the Cunarders he was—said he wouldn’t ’a 
knowed me from a born New Yorker. Always had a 
gift for langwidges. Used to know a Frenchman 
onst; and I’ll be ’anged if I wasn’t soon parley-vooin’ 
with him till he’d thought I was his mother’s son. 
But it’s doin’ my dooty by others as has brought me 

171 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


where I am, and I don’t make no complaint of it. 
Job over at the Gansevoort whenever I wants one, 
which ain’t always. Quite a tidy little sum in the 
savings bank in Brooklyn. Friends as ’ll stick by 
me as long as I’ll stick by them. And if I hadn’t lost 
me eye—but how was I to know that that low-down 
butler was a-layin’ for me at the silver-pantry door, 
and ’d let me have it anywhere he could ’it me? . . . 
And when that eyeball cracked, why, I yelled fit to 
bring the whole p’lice-force in New York right atop 
o’ me.” 

Tom was astounded. “But you said you lost your 
eye saving a young lady’s life.” 

Mr. Honeybun’s embarrassment lasted no more 
than the time needed for finding the right words. 

“Oh, did I? Well, that was the other side of it. 
Yer’ve heard that there’s always two sides to a story, 
haven’t yer? I can’t tell yer both sides to onst, now 
can I?” 

He judged it best, however, to revert to the auto¬ 
biographical. The son of a dock hand in Liverpool, 
he had been apprenticed to a gasfitter at the age of 
seventeen. 

“But my genius was for somethink bigger. I 
didn’t know just what it’d be, but I could see it ahead 
o’ me, all wuzzy-like. After a bit I come to know it 
was to fight agin the lor o’ proputty. Used to seem 
to me orful to look around and see that everythink was 
owned by somebody. Took to goin’ to meetin’s, I 
did. Found out that me and me class was the unin¬ 
herited. ‘Gord,’ I says to meself then, Til inherit 
somethink, or I’ll bust all Liverpool.’ Well, I did 

172 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


inherit somethink—inherited a good warm coat what 
a guy had left to mark his seat in the Midland Station. 
Got away with it, too. Knowin’ it was mine as much 
as his, I walks up and throws it over my arm. Ten 
minutes later I was a-wearin’ of it in Lime Street. 
That was the beginning and havin' started in, I be¬ 
gun to inherit quite a lot o’ things. ‘Nothink’s easier,’ 
says I, ‘onst you realizes that the soul o’ man is free, 
and that nothink don’t belong to nobody.' Fightin’ 
for me class, I was. Tried to make ’em see as they 
ought to stop bein’ the uninherited, and get a move on 
—and the first thing I know I was landed in Walton 
jail. You’re not asleep, Kiddy, are you?” 

Not being asleep, Tom came in for the rest of the 
narrative. Released from Walton jail, Mr. Honey- 
bun had “made tracks’’ for America. 

“Wanted to git away from a country where every- 
think was owned, and find the land o’ the free. But 
free! Lord love yer, I hadn’t been landed a hour be¬ 
fore I see everythink owned over 'ere as much as it is 
in a back’ard country like old England. Let me tell 
you this, Kid. Any man that thinks that by cornin’ to 
America he’ll git somethink for nothink’ll find hisself 
sold. I ain’t had nothink except what I’ve worked for 
—or collared. Same old lor o’ proputty what’s al¬ 
ways been a injustice to the pore. Had to begin all 
over agin the same old game of fightin’ it. But 
what’s a few months in chokey when you’re doin’ it 
for yer feller creeters, to show ’em what their rights 
is?” 

A few nights later Tom was startled by a new point 
of view as to his position. 


173 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’ve been thinkin’, Kiddy, that since yer used to 
be a State ward, yer’ll have to be a State ward agin, 
if the State knows you’re knockin’ round loose.” 

The boy cried out in alarm. “Oh, but I won’t be. 
I’ll kill myself first.” 

He could not understand this antipathy, this horror 
In a mechanical way the State had been good to him. 
The Tollivants had been good to him, too, in the 
sense that they had not been unkind. But he could 
not return to the status. It was the status that dis¬ 
mayed him. In Harfrey it had made him the single 
low-caste individual in a prim and high-caste world, 
giving everyone the right to disdain him. They 
couldn’t help disdaining him. They knew as well 
as he did that in principle he was a boy like any 
other; but by all the customs of their life he was a 
little pariah. Herding with thieves and murderers, it 
was still possible to respect himself; but to go back and 
hang on to the outer fringe of the organized life of a 
Christian society would have ravaged him within. He 
said so to Honeybun energetically. 

“That’s the way I figured that yer’d feel. So long 
as you’re on’y waitin’—or yer can say that you’re on’y 
waitin’—till yer pop comes back, it won’t matter much. 
It’ll be when school begins that it’ll go agin yer. 
There’s sure to be some pious woman sneepin’ round 
that'll tell someone as you’re not in school when you’re 
o’ school age, and then, me lad, yer’ll be back as a 
State ward on some down-homer’s farm.” 

Tom lashed the bed in the darkness. “I won’t go! 
I won’t go!” 

“That’s what I used to say the first few times they 

174 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


pinched me; but yer’ll jolly well have to go if they 
send yer. Now what I was thinkin’ is this. It’s in 
New York State that yer’d be a State ward. If you 
was out o’ this State there’d be all kinds o’ laws that 
couldn’t git yer back again. Onst when I’d been 
doin’ a bit o’ socializin’ in New Jersey, and slipped 
back to Manhattan—well, you wouldn’t believe the 
fuss it took to git me across the river when the p’lice 
got wind it was me. Never got me back at all! 
Thing died out before they was able to fix up all the 
coulds and couldn’ts of the lor.” 

He allowed the boy to think this over before going 
on with his suggestion. 

“Now if you and me was to light out together to 
another State, they wouldn’t notice that we’d gone 
before we was safe beyond their clutches. If we was 
to go to Boston, say! Boston’s a good town. I 
worked Boston onst, me and a chap named . . 

The boy felt called on to speak. “I wouldn’t be a 
socialist, not if it gave me all Boston for my own.” 

The statement, coming as it did, had the vigor of an 
ultimatum. Though but a repetition of what he had 
said a few days before, it was a repetition with more 
force. It was also with more significance, funda¬ 
mentally laying down a condition which need not be 
discussed again. 

After long silence Mr. Honeybun spoke somewhat 
wistfully. “Well, I dunno as I’d count that agin yer. 
I sometimes thinks as I’ll quit bein’ a socialist meself. 
Seems to me as if I'd like to git back with the old 
gang, and be what they calls a orthodock. You know 
what a orthodock is, don’t yer?” 

175 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“It’s a kind of religion, isn’t it?” 

“It ain’t so much a kind of religion as it’s a kind 
o’ way o’ thinkin’. You’re a orthodock when you 
don’t think at all. Them what ain’t got no mind of 
their own, what just believes and talks and votes and 
lives the way they’re told to, they’re the orthodocks. 
It don’t matter whether it’s religion or politics or lor 
or livin’, the people who don’t know nothink but just 
obeys other people what don’t know nothink, is the 
kind that gits into the least trouble.” 

“Yes, but what do you want to be like that for? 
You have got a mind of your own.” 

“Well, there’s a good deal to be said, Kiddy. First 
there’s you.” 

“Oh, if it’s only me . . 

“Yes, but when I’m yer next o’ kin it isn’t on’y you; 
it’s you first and last. I got to bring you up an or¬ 
thodock, if I’m going to bring you up at all. Yer 
can’t think for yerself yet. You’re too young. 
Stands to reason. Why, I w r as twenty, and very near 
a trained gasfitter, before I’d begun thinkin’ on me 
own. What yer does when yer’re growed up’ll be no 
concern o’ mine. But till you are growed up . . .” 

Tom had heard of quicksands, and often dreamed 
that he was being engulfed in one. He had the sensa¬ 
tion now. Circumstances having pushed him where 
he would not have ventured of his own accord, the 
treacherous ground was swallowing him up. He 
couldn't help liking Honey Lem, since he liked every¬ 
one in the world who was good to him; he was glad of 
his society in these lonely nights, and of the sense of 
his comradeship in the background even in the day; 

176 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


but between this gratitude and a lifelong partnership 
he found a difference. There were so many reasons 
why he didn’t want permanent association with this 
fairy godfather, and so many others why he couldn’t 
find the heart to tell him so! He was casting about 
for a method of escape when the fairy godfather 
continued. 

“This ’ere socialism is ahead of its time. People 
don’t understand it. It don’t do to be ahead o’ yer 
time, not too far ahead, it don’t. Now I figure out 
that if I was to go back a bit, and git in among them 
orthodocks, I might do ’em good like. Could explain 
to ’em. I ain’t sure but what I’ve took the wrong 
way, showin’ ’em first, and explainin’ to ’em after¬ 
wards. Now if I was to stop showin’ ’em at all, and 
just explain to ’em, why, there’d be folks what when 
I told ’em that nothink don’t belong to nobody they’d 
git the ’ang of it. Begins to seem to me as if I’d done 
me bit o’ sufferin’ for the cause. Seen the inside o’ 
pretty near every old jug round New York. It’s 
aged me. But if I was to sackerfice me opinions, 
and make them orthodocks feel as I was one of ’em, I 
might give ’em a pull along like.” 

The next day being Sunday, they slept late into the 
morning. In the afternoon Honey Lem had a new 
idea. Without saying what it was, he took the boy 
to walk through Fourteenth Street, till they reached 
Fifth Avenue. Here they climbed to the top of an 
electric bus going northward, and Tom had a new ex¬ 
perience. Except for having crossed it in the market 
lorry, in the dimness and emptiness of dawn, this 
stimulating thoroughfare was unknown to him. 

177 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Even on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when 
shops were shut, residences closed, and saunterers 
relatively few, it added a new concept to those already 
in his mental possession. It was that of magnificence. 
These ornate buildings, these flashing windows, these 
pictures, jewels, flowers, fabrics, furnishings, did more 
than appeal to his eye. They set free a function of 
his being that had hitherto been sealed. The first 
atavistic memory of which he had ever been aware 
was consciously in his mind. Somewhere, perhaps in 
some life before he was born, rich and beautiful things 
had been his accessories. He had been used to them. 
They were not a surprise to him now; they came as a 
matter of course. To see them was not so much a 
discovery as it was a return to what he had been ac¬ 
customed to. He was thinking of this, with an in¬ 
ward grin of derision at himself for feeling so, when 
Honey went back to the topic of the night before. 

“The reason I said Boston is because they’ve got 
that great big college there. If I’m to bring yer up, 
I’ll haveTo send yer to college.” 

The opening was obvious. “But, Honey, you don’t 
have to bring me up.” 

“How can I be yer next o’ kin if I don’t bring ye’ 
up, a young boy like you? Be sensible, Kiddy. Yer 
ch’ice is between me and the State, and I’d be a lot 
better nor that, wouldn’t I? The State won’t be 
talkin’ o’ sendin’ yer to college, mind that now.” 

There was no controverting the fact. As a State 
ward, he would not go to college, and to college he 
meant to go. If he could not go by one means he must 

178 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


go by another. Since Honey would prove a means of 
some sort, he might be obliged to depend on him. 

The bus was bowling and lurching up the slope by 
which Fifth Avenue borders the Park, when Honey 
rose, clinging to the backs of the neighboring seats. 
“We’ll git out at the next corner.” 

Having reached the ground, he led the way across 
the street, scanning the houses opposite. 

“There it is,” he said, with choked excitement, 
when he had found the fagade he was looking for. 
“That big brown front, with the high steps, and the 
swell bow-winders. That’s where the Whitelaw 
baby used to live.” 

Face to face with the spot, Tom felt a flickering of 
interest. He listened with attention while Honey ex¬ 
plained how the baby carriage had for the last time 
been lifted down by two footmen, and how it was 
wheeled away by the nurse. 

“Nash, her name was. I seen her come out one 
day, when Goody and me was standin’ ’ere. Nice 
little thing she seemed, English, same as I be. Yes, 
Goody and me’d sniggle and snaggle ourselves every 
which way to see how we could cook up a yarn that’d 
ketch on to some o’ that money. We sure did read 
the papers them days! There wasn’t nothink about 
the Whitelaw baby what we didn’t know. Now, if 
yer’ve looked long enough at the ’ouse, Kid, I’ll show 
yer somethink else.” 

They went into the Park by the same little opening 
through which the Whitelaw baby had passed, not to 
return. Like a detective reconstructing the action of 
a crime, he followed the path Miss Nash had taken, 

179 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


almost finding the marks of the wheels in the gravel. 
Going round the shoulder of a little hill, they came to 
a fan-shaped elm, in the shade of which there was a 
seat. Beyond the seat was a clump of lilac, so 
grouped as to have a hollow like a horseshoe in its 
heart, with a second seat close by. Honey revived 
the scene as if he had witnessed it. Miss Nash had 
sat here; her baby carriage had stood there. The 
other nurse, name o’ Miss Messenger, had put her 
baby beneath the elm, and taken her seat where she 
could watch it. All he was obliged to leave out was 
the actual exchange of the image for the baby, which 
remained a mystery. 

“This ’ere laylock bush ain’t the same what was 
growin’ ’ere then. That one was picked down, branch 
by branch, and carried off for tokens. Had a sprig 
of it meself at one time. I always thinks them little 
memoriums is instructive. I recolleck there was a 
man ’anged in Liverpool, and the ’angman, a friend of 
my guv’nor’s, give me a bit of the chap’s shirt, what 
he’d left in his cell when he changed to a clean one to 
be ’anged in. Well, I kep’ that bit o’ shirt for years. 
Always reminded me not to murder no one. Wish I 
had it now. Funny it’d be, wouldn’t it, if you turned 
out to be the Whitelaw baby? He’d a’ been just 
about your age.” 

Tom threw himself sprawling on the seat where 
Miss Nash had read Juliet Allingharri s Sin, and 
laughed lazily. “I couldn’t be, because his name was 
Harry, and mine’s Tom.” 

“Oh, a little thing like that wouldn’t invidiate your 
claim.” 

180 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


‘‘But I haven’t got a claim. You don’t suppose my 
mother stole me, do you? That’s the very thing she 
used to tell me not to . . 

The laugh died on his lips. As Honey stood look¬ 
ing down at him there was a light in his blue-gray eye 
like the striking of a match. Tom knew that the same 
thought was in both their minds. Why should a 
woman have uttered such a warning if she had not 
been afraid of a suspicion? A 'flush that not only 
reddened his tanned cheeks, but mounted to the roots 
of his bushy, horizontal eyebrows, made him angry 
with himself. He sprang to his feet. 

“Look here, Honey! Aren’t there animals in this 
Park? Let’s go and find them.” 

To his relief, Honey pressed no question as to his 
mother and stolen babies as they went off to the Zoo. 


181 


XXII 


HE move to Boston was made during August, so 



that they might be settled in time for the opening 
of the schools. The flitting was with the ease of the 
obscure. Also with the ease of the obscure, Lemuel 
changed his name to George, while Tom Quidmore 
became again Tom Whitelaw. There were reasons to 
justify these decisions on the part of both. 

“Got into trouble onst in Boston under the name of 
Lemuel, and if any old sneeper was to look me up 
. . . Not but what Lemuel isn’t a more aristocraticker 
name than George; but there’s times when somethink 
what no one won’t notice’ll suit you best. So I’ll be 
George Honeybun, a pal o’ yer father’s, what left yer 
to me on his dyin’ deathbed.” 

The name of Tom Whitelaw was resumed on 
grounds both sentimental and prudential. In the ab¬ 
sence of any other tie to the human race, it was some¬ 
thing to the boy to know that he had had a father. 
His father had been a Whitelaw; his grandfather had 
been a Whitelaw; there was a whole line of White- 
laws back into the times when families first began to 
be known by names. A slim link with a past, at least 
it was a link. The Quidmore name was no link at all; 
it was disconnection and oblivion. It signified the 
ship that had never had a port. As a Whitelaw, he 
had sailed from somewhere, even though the port 
would forever be unknown to him. 


182 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was a matter of prudence, too, to cover up his 
traces. In the unlikely event of the State of New 
York busying itself with the fate of its former ward, 
the name of Quidmore would probably be used. A 
well-behaved Tom Whitelaw, living with his next of 
kin, and attending school in Boston according to the 
law, would have the best chance of going unmolested. 

They found a lodging, cheap, humble, but sufficient, 
on that northern slope of Beacon Hill which within 
living memory has more than once changed hands 
with the silent advance and recession of a tide 
coming in and going out. There are still old people 
who can remember when some of the worthiest of the 
sons of the Puritans had their windows, in these steep 
and narrow streets, brightened by the rising or the 
setting sun. Then, with an almost ghostly furtive¬ 
ness, they retired as the negro came and routed them. 
The negro seemed fixed in possession when the He¬ 
brew stole on silently, and routed him. At the time 
when George Honeybun and Tom Whitelaw came 
looking for a home, the ancient inhabitant of the land 
was beginning to creep back again, and the Hebrew 
taking flight. In a red-brick house of forbidding ex¬ 
pression in Grove Street they found a room with two 
beds. 

Within a few days Ploney, whose strength was his 
skill, was working as a stevedore on the Charlestown 
docks. Tom was picking up small jobs about the 
markets. By September he had passed his examina¬ 
tions and had entered the Latin School. A new life 
had begun. From the old life no pursuit or inter¬ 
ference ever followed them. 

183 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The boy shot up. In the course of a year he had 
grown out of most of his clothes. To the best of his 
modest ability, Honey was generous with new ones. 
He was generous with everything. That Tom should 
lack nothing, he cut down his own needs till he seemed 
to have none but the most elemental. Of his “nice 
times” in New York nothing had followed him to Bos¬ 
ton but a love of spirits and tobacco. Of the two, the 
spirits went completely. When Tom’s needs were 
pressing the supply of tobacco diminished till it some¬ 
times disappeared. If on Sundays he could venture 
over the hill, to listen to the band on the Common, or 
stroll with the boy in the Public Gardens, it was be¬ 
cause the Sunday suit, bought in the days when he 
had no one to provide for but himself, was sponged 
and pressed and brushed and mended, with scrupulous 
devotion. The motive of so much self-denial puzzled 
Tom, since, so far as he could judge, it was not 
affection. 

He was old enough now to perceive that affection 
had inspired most of his good fortune. People were 
disposed to like him for himself. There was rarely 
a teacher who did not approve of him. By the mar¬ 
ket men, among whom he still picked up a few dollars 
on Saturdays and in vacations, he was always wel¬ 
comed heartily. In school he never failed to hold his 
own till the boys discovered that his father, or uncle, 
or something, was a stevedore, after which he was 
ignored. Girls regarded him with a hostile interest, 
while toward them he had no sentiments of any kind. 
He could go through a street and scarcely notice that 
there was a girl in it, and yet girls wouldn’t leave him 

184 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


alone. They bothered him with overtures of friend¬ 
ship to which he did not respond, or tossed their heads 
at him, or called him names. But in general the prin¬ 
ciple was established that he could be liked. 

But Honey was an enigma. Love was apparently 
not the driving power urging him to these unexpected 
fulfillments. If it was, it had none of the harmless 
dog-and-puppy ways which Tom had grown accus¬ 
tomed to. Honey never pawed him, as the masters 
often pawed the boys, and the boys pawed one an¬ 
other. He never threw an arm across his shoulder, 
or called him by a more endearing name than Kiddy. 
Apart from an eagle-eyed solicitude, he never mani¬ 
fested tenderness, nor asked for it. That Tom would 
ever owe him anything he didn’t so much as hint at. 
“Dooty o’ next o’ kin” was the blanket explanation 
with which he covered everything. 

“But you’re not my next of kin,” Tom, to whom 
schooling had revealed the meaning of the term, was 
bold enough to object. “Next of kin means that 
you’d be my nearest blood relation; and we’re not 
relations at all.” 

Honey was undisturbed in his Olympian detach¬ 
ment. “Do yer suppose I dunno that? But I be¬ 
lieves as Gord sees we’re kin lots o’ times when men 
don’t take no notice. You was give to me. You was 
put into my ’ands to bring up. And up I’m goin’ to 
bring yer, if it breaks me.” 

It was a close Sunday evening in September, the last 
of the summer holidays. Tom would celebrate next 
day by entering on a higher grade at school. He had 
had new boots and clothes. For the first time he was 

185 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


worried by the source of this beneficence. As night 
closed down they sat for a breath of fresh air on the 
steps of the house in Grove Street. Grove Street held 
the reeking smell of cooking, garbage, and children, 
which only a strong wind ever blows away from the 
crowded quarters of the cities, and there had been no 
strong wind for a week. Used to that, they didn’t 
mind it. They didn’t mind the screeching chatter or 
the raucous laughter that rose from doorways all up 
and down the hill, nor the yelling of the youngsters 
playing in the roadway. Somewhere round a corner 
a group of Salvationists, supported by a blurting 
cornet, sang with much gusto: 

Oh, how I love Jesus! 

Oh, how I love Jesus! 

Oh, how I love Jesus! 

Because He first loved me. 

They didn’t mind it when Mrs. Danker, their land¬ 
lady, a wiry New England woman, sitting in the dark 
of the hall behind them, joined in, in her cracked 
voice, with the Salvationists, nor when Mrs. Gribbens, 
a stout old party who picked up a living scrubbing 
railway cars, joined in with Mrs. Danker. From 
neighboring steps mothers called out to their children 
in Yiddish, and the children answered in strident 
American. But to Honey and Tom all this was the 
friendly give-and-take of promiscuity which they 
would have missed had it not been there. 

Each was so concentrated on his own ruling purpose 
that nothing external was of moment. Honey was 
to give, and Tom was to receive, an education. That 

186 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the recipient’s heart should be fixed on it, Tom found 
natural enough; but that the giver’s should be equally 
intense seemed to have nothing to account for it. 

He glanced at the quiet figure, upright and muscu¬ 
lar, his hands on his knees, like a stone Pharaoh on 
the Nile. 

“Why don’t you smoke?” 

“I don’t want to drop no ashes on this ’ere suit.” 

“Have you got any tobacco ?” 

“I didn’t think to lay in none when I come ’ome 
yesterday.” 

“Is that because there was so much to be spent on 
me?” 

“Oh, I dunno about that.” 

Tom gathered all his ambitions together and offered 
them up. “Well, I guess this can be the last year. 
After I’ve got through it I’ll be ready to go to work.” 

“And not go to college!” The tone was one of 
consternation. “Lord love yer, Kiddy, what’s bitin’ 
yer now?” 

“It’s biting me that you’ve got to work so hard.” 

“If it don’t bite me none, why not let it go at that?” 

“Because I don’t seem able to. I’ve taken so much 
from you.” 

“Well, I’ve had it to ’and out, ain’t I?” 

“But I don’t see why you do it.” 

“A young boy like you don’t have to see. There’s 
lots o' things I didn’t understand at your age.” 

“You don’t seem specially—” he sought for words 
less direct, but without finding them—“you don’t seem 
-—specially fond of me.” 

“I never was one to be fond o’ people, except it was 

187 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


i 

a dog. Always had a 'ankerin' for a dog; but a free 
life don’t let yer keep one. A dog’ll never go back 
on yer.” 

“Well, do you think I would?” 

“I don’t think nothink about it, Kid. When the 
time comes that you can do without me . . .” 

“That time’ll never come, Honey, after all you’ve 
done for me.” 

“I don’t want yer to feel yerself bound by that.” 

“I don’t feel myself bound by it; but—dash it all, 
Honey!—whatever you feel or don’t feel about me, 
I’m fond of you ” 

He was still imperturbable. “Well, Kid, you 
wouldn’t be the first, not by a lot.” 

“But if I can never be anything for you, or do any¬ 
thing for you . . .” 

“There’s one thing you could do.” 

“What is it? I don’t care how hard it is.” 

“Well, when you’re one o’ them big lawyers, or 
bankers, or somethink—drorin’ yer fifty dollars a 
week—you can have a shy at this ’ere lor o’ proputty. 
It don’t seem right to me that some people should have 
all the beef to chaw, and others not so much as the 
bones; but I can’t git the ’ang of it. If nothink don’t 
belong to nobody, then what about all your dough in 
the New York savin’s bank, and mine in the one in 
Brooklyn? We’re keepin’ it agin yer goin’ to col¬ 
lege, ain't we? And don’t that belong to us? Yes, 
by George, it do! So there you are. But if when 
yer gits yer lamin’ yer can steddy it out. . . .” 


188 


XXIII 


r | 'HE boy was adolescent, sentimental, and lonely. 

Mere human companionship, such as that which 
Honey gave him, was no longer enough for him. He 
was seeing visions and dreaming dreams. He began 
to wish he had some one with whom to share his un¬ 
formulated hopes, his crude and burning opinions. 
He looked at fellows who were friends going two and 
two, pouring out their foolish young hearts to each 
other, and envied them. The lads of his own age 
liked him well enough. Now and then one of them 
would approach him with shy or awkward signals, 
making for closer acquaintance; but when they learned 
that he lived in Grove Street with a stevedore they 
drew away. None of them ever transcended the law 
of caste, to stand by him in spite of his humble con¬ 
ditions. Boys whose families were down wanted 
nothing to hamper them in climbing up. Boys whose 
families were up wanted nothing that might loosen 
their position and pull them down. The sense of 
social insecurity which was the atmosphere of homes 
reacted on well-meaning striplings of fifteen, sixteen, 
and seventeen, turning them into snobs and cads be¬ 
fore they had outgrown callowness. 

But during the winter of the year in which he be¬ 
came sixteen there were two, you might have said 
three, who broke in upon this solitude. 

189 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


In walking to the Latin School from Grove Street 
he was in the habit of going through Louisburg 
Square. If you know Boston you know Louisburg 
Square as that quaint red-brick rectangle, like many 
in the more Georgian parts of London, which com¬ 
memorates the gallant dash of the New England 
colonists on the French fortress of Louisburg in Cape 
Breton. It is the heart of that conservative old Bos¬ 
ton, which is now shrinking in size and importance 
before the onset of the foreigner till it has become 
like a small beleaguered citadel. Here the descend¬ 
ants of the Puritans barricade themselves behind their 
financial walls, as their ancestors within their stock¬ 
ades, while their city is handed over to the Irishman 
and the Italian as an undefended town. The Boston 
of tradition is a Boston of tradition only. Like the 
survivors of Noah’s deluge clinging to the top of a 
rock, they to whom the Boston of tradition was be¬ 
queathed are driven back on Beacon Hill as a final 
refuge from the billows rising round them. A high¬ 
bred, cultivated, sympathetic people, they have so 
given away their heritage as to be but a negligible 
factor in the State, in the country, of which their 
fathers and grandfathers may be said once to have 
kept the conscience. 

But to Tom Whitelaw Louisburg Square meant 
only the dignified fronts and portals behind which 
lived the rich people who had no point of contact with 
himself. They couldn’t have ignored him more com¬ 
pletely than he ignored them. He thought of them as 
little as the lion cub in a circus parade thinks of the 
people of the city through which he passes in proces- 

IQO 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

sions. Then, one clay, one of these strangers spoke 
to him. 

It was a youth of about his own age. More than 
once, as Tom went by, and the stout boy stood on the 
sidewalk in front of his own house, they had looked 
each other up and down with unabashed mutual ap¬ 
praisal. Tom saw a lad too short for his width, and 
unhealthily flabby. He had puffy hands, and puffy 
cheeks, with eyes seeming smaller than they were be¬ 
cause the puffy eyelids covered them. The mouth had 
those appealing curves comically troubled in repose, 
but fulfilling their purpose in giggling. On the first 
occasion when Tom passed by the lips were set to the 
serious task of inspection. They said nothing; they 
betrayed nothing. Tom himself thought nothing, ex¬ 
cept that the boy was fat. 

They had looked at each other some two or three 
times a week, for perhaps a month, when one day the 
fat boy said, “Hullo!” Tom also said, “Hullo!” con¬ 
tinuing on his way. A day or two later they repeated 
these salutations, though neither forsook his attitude 
of reserve. The fat boy did this first, speaking when 
they had hullo’ed each other for the third or fourth 
time. His voice was high and girlish, and yet with a 
male crack in it. 

“What school do you go to?” 

Tom stopped. “I go to the Latin School. What 
school do you go to?” 

“I go to Doolittle and Pray’s.” 

“That's the big private school in Marlborough 
Street, isn’t it?” 

The fat boy made the inarticulate grunt which with 

IQI 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


most Americans means “Yes.” “I was put down for 
Groton, only mother wouldn't let me leave home. 
I'm going to Harvard.” 

“I'm going to Harvard, too. What class do you 
expect to be in?” 

The fat boy replied that he expected to be in the 
class of nineteen-nineteen. 

Tom said he expected to be in that class himself. 

“Now I’ve got to beat it to the Latin School. So 
long!” 

“So long!” 

Tom carried to his school in the Fenway an unusual 
feeling of elation. With friendly intent someone had 
approached him from the world outside. It was not 
the first time it had ever happened, but it was the 
first time it had ever happened in just this way. He 
could see already that the fat boy was not one of 
those he would have chosen for a friend; but he was 
so lonely that he welcomed anyone. Moreover, he 
divined that the fat boy was lonely, too. Boys of that 
type, the Miss Nancy and the mother’s darling type, 
were often consumed by loneliness, and no one ever 
pitied them. Few went to their aid when other boys 
“picked” on them, but of those few Tom Whitelaw 
was always one. He found them, once you had ac¬ 
cepted their mannerisms, as well worth knowing as 
other boys, while they spared him a scrap of admira¬ 
tion. It was possible that in this fat boy he might 
find the long-sought fellow who would not “turn him 
down” on discovering that he lived in Grove Street. 
Being turned down in this way had made him sick at 
heart so often that he had decided never any more to 

192 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


make or trust advances. In suffering temptation 
again he assured himself that it would be for the last 
time in his life. 

On returning from school he looked for the boy in 
Louisburg Square, but he was not there. A few hun¬ 
dred yards farther, however, he came in for another 
adventure. 

The January morning had been mild, with melting 
snow. By midday the wind had shifted to the norths 
with a falling thermometer. By late afternoon the 
streets were coated with a glaze of ice. Tom could 
swagger down the slope of Grove Street easily enough 
in the security of rubber soles. 

But not so a girl, whose slippers and high French 
heels made her helpless on the steep glare. Having 
ventured over the brow of the hill, she found herself 
held. A step into the air would have been as easy as 
another on this slippery descent. The best she could 
do was to sway in the keen wind, keeping her balance 
with the grace of one of the blue spruces which used 
to be blown about at Bere. Her outstretched arms 
waved up and down, as a blue spruce waves its 
branches. Coming abreast of her, Tom found her 
laughing to herself, but on seeing him she laughed 
frankly and aloud. 

“Oh, catch me! I’m going to tumble! Ow-w-w!” 

Tom snatched at one hand, while she caught him by 
the shoulder with the other. 

“Saved! Wasn’t it lucky that you came along? 
You’re the Whitelaw boy, aren’t you?” 

Tom admitted that he was, though his new sensa¬ 
tions, with this exquisite creature clinging to him like 

193 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


a drowning man to his rescuer, choked the mono¬ 
syllable in his throat. Though he had often in a 
scrimmage protected little boys, he had never before 
been thrown into this comic, laughing tussle with a 
girl. It had the excuse for itself that she couldn’t 
stand unless he held her up. He held her firmly, look¬ 
ing into her dancing eyes with his first emotional con¬ 
sciousness of a girl’s prettiness. 

His arm supporting her, she ventured on a step. 
“I’m Maisie Danker,” she explained, while taking it. 
“I see you going in and out the house.” 

“I’ve never seen you.” 

“Perhaps you’ve seen me and not noticed me.” 

“I couldn’t,” he declared, with vehemence. “I’ve 
never seen you before in my life. If I had . . 

Her high heels so nearly slipped from under her 
that they were compelled to hold each other as if in an 
embrace. “If you had—what?” 

He knew what, but the words in which to say it 
needed a higher mode of utterance. The red lips, the 
glowing cheeks, had the vitality of the lively eyes. A 
red tam-o’-shanter, a red knitted thing like a heavenly 
translation of his own earthly sweater, were bewitch- 
ingly diabolic when worn with a black skirt, black 
stockings, and black shoes. 

As he did not respond to her challenge, she went on 
with her self-introduction. “I guess you haven’t seen 
me, because I only arrived three days ago. I’m Mrs. 
Danker’s niece. Live in Nashua. Worked in the 
woolen mills there. Now I’ve come to visit my aunt 
for the winter.” 


194 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


For the sake of hearing her speak, he asked if she 
was going to work in Boston. 

“I don’t know. Maybe I’ll take singing lessons. 
Got a swell voice.” 

If again he was dumb it was because of the failure 
of his faculties. Nothing in his experience had pre¬ 
pared him for the give-and-take of a badinage in 
which the surface meanings were the less important. 
Foolish and helpless, unable to show his manly superi¬ 
ority except in the strength with which he held her up, 
he got a lesson in the new art there and then. 

“Ever dance?” 

“I’m never asked.” 

“Oh, it’s you that ought to do the asking.” 

“I mean that I’m never asked where there’s dancing 
going on.” 

“Gee, you don’t have to be. You just find a girl— 
and go.” 

“But I don’t know how to dance.” 

“I’ll teach you.” 

Slipping and sliding, w r ith cries of alarm on her 
part, and stalwart assurances on his, they approached 
their own doorstep. 

“Ow-w-w! Plold me! I’m going!” 

“No you’re not—not while I’ve got you.” 

“But I don’t want to grab you so hard.” 

“That’s all right. I can stand it.” 

“But I can’t. I’m not used to it.” 

“Then it’s a very good time to begin.” 

“What’s the use of beginning if there’s nothing to 
go on with?” 

“How' do you know there won’t be?” 

195 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Well, what can there be ?” 

Had Miss Danker always waited for answers to her 
questions Tom would have been more nonplussed than 
he was. But the game which he didn’t know at all 
she knew thoroughly, according to her lights. She 
never left him at a loss for more than a few seconds 
at a time. Her method being that of touch-and-go, 
reserving to herself the right of coming back again, 
she carried his education one step farther still. 

“Don’t you ever go to the movies?” 

He replied that he had gone once or twice with 
Honey, but not often. To be on the same breezy 
level as herself, he added in explanation: “Haven’t 
got the dough.” 

“But the movies don’t take dough, not hardly any.” 

“They take more than I’ve got.” 

“More than you’ve got? Gee! Then you can’t 
have anything at all.” 

It was not so much a taunt as it was a statement, 
and yet it was a statement with a little taunt in it. 
For once driven to bravado, he gave away a secret. 

“Well, I haven’t—except what’s in the bank.” 

“Oh, you’ve got money in the bank, have you?” 

“Sure! But I’m keeping it to go to college.” 

She stared at him as if he had been a duck-billed 
rabbit, or some variety of fauna hitherto unknown. 

“Gee! I should think a fellow who had money in 
the bank would want to blow some of it on having a 
good time—a fellow with any jazz.” 

Once more she spared him discomfiture. Slipping 
into the hallway, she said over her shoulder as he fol¬ 
lowed her : “How old are you?” 

196 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Sixteen.” 

She flashed round at him. “Sixteen! Gee! I 
thought you was my age if you was a day. Honest I 
did. I’m eighteen, an old lady compared with you.” 

“Oh, but boys are always older than girls, for their 
age.” 

“You are, sure. Anyways, you saved me on that 
slippery hill, and I think you ought to have a kiss for 
it. Come, baby, kiss your poor old ma.” 

Though the hallway was dark, the kiss had to be 
given and taken furtively. Whatever it was to 
Maisie Danker, to Tom Whitelaw it was the entrance 
to a higher and an increased life. The pressure of 
her lips on his sent through his frame a dynamic 
glow he had not supposed to be among nature’s possi¬ 
bilities. Moreover, it threw light on that experience 
as to which he had mused ever since he had first talked 
confidentially to Bertie Tollivant. Though instinct 
had taught him something in the intervening years, he 
had up to this minute gained nothing in the way of 
practical discovery. Now an horizon that had been 
dark was lifting to disclose a wonderland. 

With her light laugh Maisie had run into her aunt’s 
apartment, and shut the door. Tom began heavily, 
pensively, to climb the stairs. But halfway up he 
paused to mark off another stage in his perceptions. 

“So that’s what it’s like! That’s why they all think 
so much about it—and try to hush it up!” 


197 


XXIV 


H E himself found something to hush up when he 
recounted the incident to Honey in the evening. 
He told of meeting Mrs. Danker’s niece on the ice- 
coated hill, and helping her down to the door. Of his 
sensations as she clung to him he said nothing. He 
said nothing of the kiss in the dark hallway. During 
the rest of the evening, and after he had gone to bed, 
he wondered why. They all hushed these things up, 
and he did as the rest; but what was the basic reason? 

As his first emotional encounter the subject was 
sufficiently in his mind next day to make him duller 
than usual at school. On his way home from school 
it so preoccupied his thought that he forgot to look 
for the fat boy. It was the fat boy who first saw 
him, hailing him as he approached. There was al¬ 
ready between them that acceptance of each other 
which is the first stage of friendship. 

“What’s your name?” 

“Tom Whitelaw. What’s yours?” 

“Guy Ansley. How old are you?” 

“Sixteen. How old are you?” 

“I’m sixteen, too. What’s your father do?” 

“I haven’t got a father. I live with—” it was diffi¬ 
cult to explain—“with a man who kind o’ takes care 
of me.” 

“A guardian?” 


198 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Something like that. What does your father 
do?” 

“He’s a corporation lawyer. Makes big money, 
too.” As Tom began to move along the fat boy went 
with him, keeping step. “What’s your guardian do?” 

“He does anything that’ll give him a job. Mostly 
he’s a stevedore.” 

“What’s a stevedore? Sounds as if it had some¬ 
thing to do with bull-fighting.” 

“It’s a longshoreman. He loads and unloads ships.” 

They stopped at the corner of Pinckney Street 
The puffy countenance fell. Tom could follow his 
companion’s progression of bewilderments. 

“Where do you live?” 

“I live in Grove Street.” 

It was the minute of suspense. All had been con¬ 
fessed. The countenance that had fallen went abso¬ 
lutely blank. To himself the tall, proud, sensitive lad 
was saying that his future life was staked on the re¬ 
sponse the fat boy chose to make. If he showed signs 
of wriggling out of an embarrassing situation he, 
Tom Whitelaw, would range himself forever with the 
enemies of the rich. 

The fat boy spoke at last. 

“So you’re that kind of fellow.” 

“Yes, I’m that kind of fellow.” 

This was mere marking time. The decision was 
still to come. It came with an air on the fat boy’s 
part of heroic resolution. 

“Well, I don’t care.” 

Tom breathed again, breathed with bravado. 
“Neither do I.” 


199 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


In the stress of so much big-heartedness the girlish 
voice became a croak. “I know guys who think that 
if another guy isn’t rich they must treat him as so 
much dirt. I’m not that sort. I’m democratic. I 
wouldn’t turn down a fellow just because he lived in 
Grove Street. If I liked him I’d stick to him. I’m 
not snobbish. How do you know you couldn’t give 
him a peg up, and he’d be grateful to you all his 
life 

Thinking this over afterward, Tom found it hard 
to disengage the bitter from the sweet; but he had not 
much chance to think it over. Any spare minute he 
found pre-empted by Maisie Danker, who seemed to 
camp in the dark hallway. If she was not there when 
he entered, she appeared before he could go upstairs. 
The ice having melted in the street, she had other 
needs of protection, an errand to do in the crowded 
region of Bowdoin Square, a shop to visit across the 
Common which was so wide and lonesome in winter 
twilights, a dance hall to locate in case they ever made 
up their minds to visit it. She was always timid, 
clinging, laughing, adorable. The embodiment of 
gayety, she made him gay, which was again a new 
sensation. Never before had he felt young as he 
felt young with her. The minutes they spent 
swamped in the throngs of the lighted streets, between 
five and seven on a winter’s afternoon, were his first 
minutes of escape from a world of care. Care had 
been his companion since he could remember any¬ 
thing; and now his companion was this exquisite 
thing, all lightsomeness and joy. 


200 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He was later than usual in returning from school 
one afternoon, because a teacher had given him a 
commission to carry out which took some two hours 
of his time. As it had sent him toward the south 
end of the city, he had the Common to traverse on his 
way home. Snow had recently fallen; but through 
the main avenues under the trees the paths had been 
cleared. On the Frog Pond the drifts had been 
swept up, so that there could be a little skating. As 
Tom passed by he could hear the scraping and grind¬ 
ing of skates, and the hoarse shouts of hobbledehoys. 
At any other time he would have stopped, either to 
look on peacefully, or to take part in some bit of free- 
for-all, rough-and-tumble skylarking in the snow. 
But Maisie might be waiting. She might even have 
given up waiting, which would take all his pleasure 
from the afternoon. 

To reach home more quickly he followed a short 
cut, scarcely shoveled out, on the slope of the Com¬ 
mon below Beacon Hill. Here there were no foot 
passengers but himself. Neither, for some little dis¬ 
tance, were there any trees. There was only the white 
shroud of the snow, freezing to a crust. A misty 
moon drifted through a tempest of scudding clouds, 
while wherever in the offing there was a group of 
elms the electric lights danced through their tossing 
branches as if they were wind-blown lanterns. 

In spite of his hurry, the boy came to a standstill. 
It was a minute at which to fancy himself lost in Moo- 
sonee or Labrador. His voyageur guides had failed 
him; his dog team had run away; his pemmican—he 
supposed it would be pemmican—had given out. Fie 

201 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


was homeless, starving, abandoned, alone but for the 
polar bears. 

It was not a polar bear that he saw come flounder¬ 
ing down the hillside, but it might have been a black 
one. It was certainly black; its nature was certainly 
animal. It rolled and tumbled and panted and grunted, 
and now and then it moaned. For a few minutes it 
remained stationary, with internal undulations; then 
it scrambled a few paces, as an elephant might 
scramble whose feet had been sawn off. A dying 
mammoth would also have emitted just these raucous 
groans. 

Suddenly it squealed. The squeal was like that of 
a pig when the knife is thrust into its throat. It was 
girlish, piercing, and yet had a masculine shriek in it. 
Tom Whitelaw knew what was happening. It had 
happened to himself so often in the days when he was 
different from other boys that his fists seemed to 
clench and his feet to spring before his mind had 
given the command. In clearing the fifty odd yards 
of snow between him and the wallowing monster, he 
chose a form of words which young hooligans would 
understand as those of authority. 

“What in hell are yez doin’ to that kid? Are yez 
puttin’ a knife in him? Leave him be, or I’ll knock 
the brains out of every one of yez.” 

He was in among them, laying about him before 
they knew what had landed in their midst. They 
were not brutal youngsters; they were only jocose in 
the manner of their kind. Having spied the fat boy 
coming down to watch the skating, it was as natural 
for them to jump on him as it would be for a pack of 


202 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


dogs who chanced to see a sloth. With the courage 
of the mob, and also with its rapidity of thought- 
transfer, they had closed in silently and rushed him. 
He was on his back in a second. In a second they 
were clambering all over him. When he staggered 
to his feet they let him run, only to catch him and pull 
him down again. So staggering, so running, so com¬ 
ing down like a lump of jelly in the snow, he had 
reached the top of the hill, his tormentors hanging to 
him as if their teeth were in his flesh, at the minute 
when Tom first perceived the black mass. 

The fat boy had not lacked courage. He had 
fought. That is, he had kicked and bitten and 
scratched, with the fury of vicious helplessness. He 
had not cried for mercy. He had not cried out at all. 
He had struggled for breath; he had nearly strangled; 
but his pantings and gruntings were only for breath 
just as were theirs. Strong in spite of his unwieldi¬ 
ness, he was not without the moral spunk which can 
perish at a pinch, but will not give in. 

None of them had struck him. That would have 
been thought cowardly. They had only plastered him 
with snow, in his mouth, in his ears, in his eyes, and 
down below his collar. This he could have suffered, 
still without a plea, had not their play become fiercer. 
They began to tear open his clothing, to wrench it off 
the buttons. They stuffed snow inside his waistcoat, 
inside his shirt, inside his trousers. He was naked to 
the cold. And yet it was not the cold that drew from 
him that piglike squeal; it was the indignity. He was 
Guy Ansley, a rich man’s son, in his native sanctified 

203 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


old Boston a young lordling; but these muckers had 
mauled the last rag of honor out of him. 

They were good-natured little demons, with no 
more notion of his tragedy than if he had been a 
snowman. As soon as the strapping young giant had 
leaped in among them, they ran off with screams of 
laughter. Most of them were tired of the fun in any 
case; a few lingered at a distance to “call names,” but 
even they soon disappeared. Tom could only help 
the lumbering body to its feet. 

Cleaning him of snow was more difficult, and since 
it was melting next his skin, it had to be done at once. 
The shirt and underclothing being wet, and a keen 
wind blowing, his teeth were soon chattering. Even 
when buttoned tightly in his outer clothes he was dank 
and clammy within. It helped him a little that Tom 
should strip off his own overcoat and exchange with 
him; but nothing could really warm him till he got 
into his own bed. 

They would have run all of the short distance to 
Louisburg Square only that young Ansley was not a 
runner at any time, and at this time was exhausted. 
Tom could only drag him along as a dead weight. 
Except for the brief observations necessary to what 
they had to do, they hardly spoke a word. Speech 
was nearly impossible. The only aim of importance 
was covering the ground. 

The old manservant who admitted them in Louis¬ 
burg Square went dumb with dismay. Having 
brought his charge into the hall, Tom was obliged to 
take the lead. 


204 


THE HAPPY ISLES 




“He's been tumbling in the snow. He’s got wet. 
He may have caught a chill. Better call his mother.” 

The fat boy spoke. “Mother’s in New York. So’s 
father. Here, Pilcher, help me up to my room.” 

As the two went up the stairs, Tom was left stand¬ 
ing in the hall. A voice at the head of the stairs 
arrested his attention because it was a girl’s. Since 
knowing Maisie Danker, all girls’ voices had begun to 
interest him. This voice was clear, silvery, peremp¬ 
tory, a little sharp, like the note of a crystal bell. 
Pilcher explained something, whereupon the owner 
of the voice ran down. On the red carpet of the 
stairs, with red-damasked paper as a background, her 
white figure was spiritlike beneath a dim oriental hall 
light. 

“I’m Hildred Ansley,” she said, with a cool air of 
self-possession. “I see my brother’s had an accident 
Pilcher is putting him to bed. Pm sure we’re very 
much obliged to you.” 

She was only a child, perhaps fourteen, but a com¬ 
petent child, who knew what to say. Not pretty, as 
Maisie was, she had presence and personality. In 
this she was helped by her height, since she was tall, 
and would be taller, and more by her intelligence. It 
was the first time he had ever had occasion to observe 
that some faces were intelligent, though it was not 
quite easy to say why. “Little Miss Ansley knows 
what’s what,” he commented silently, but aloud he 
said that if he were in her place he would send for a 
doctor. Though her brother had had no bones broken, 
he might easily have caught a bad cold. 

“Thank you! I’ll do it at once.” 

205 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She made her way to a table, somewhat belittered 
with caps and gloves, behind the stairs, at the back of 
the hall. Taking up the receiver, she called a number, 
politely and yet with a ring of command. While she 
was speaking he noticed his surroundings. 

If to him they seemed baronial it w r as because his 
experience had been cramped. Louisburg Square is 
not baronial; it is only dignified. For the early nine¬ 
teenth century its houses were spacious; for the early 
twentieth they are a little narrow, a little steep, a little 
lacking in imaginative outlet. But to Tom Whitelaw, 
with memories that went back to the tenements of 
New York, to whom the homes of the Tollivants and 
the Quidmores had meant reasonable comfort, who 
found the sharing of one room with George Honey- 
bun endurable, these walls with their red paper, these 
stairs with their red carpet, this lofty gloom, this 
sense of wealth, were all that he dreamed of as palatial. 

When Miss Ansley returned from the telephone, he 
asked if he might have his overcoat. Her brother had 
worn it upstairs on going to his room. “That’s his,” 
he explained, pointing to the soggy Burberry he had 
thrown down on a carved settle. 

“Oh, certainly! I’ll run up and get it. I won’t 
ask you to go upstairs to the drawing-room; but if you 
don’t mind taking a seat in here ...” 

Throwing open the door of the dining room, which 
was on the ground floor, she switched on the light. 
Tom entered and stood still. So this was the sort 
of place in which rich people took their meals! 

It was a glow of rich gleaming lights, lights from 
mahogany, lights from silver, lights from porcelain. 

206 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


In the center of the table lay a round piece of lace, on 
which stood a silver dish with nothing in it. He 
knew without being told, though he had never thought 
of it before, that it needed nothing in it. There were 
things so beautiful as to fulfil their purpose merely 
in being beautiful. From above a black-marble man¬ 
telpiece a man looked down at him with jovial eyes, a 
man in a high collar and huge black neckerchief, who 
might have been the grandfather or great-grandfather 
of Guy and Hildred Ansley. Fie had the fat good 
humor of the one and the bright intelligence of the 
other, the source in his genial self of types so widely 
different. 

Young Miss Ansley tripped in with the coat across 
her arm. “I’m sure my father and mother will want 
to thank you when they come back. Guy’s been very 
naughty. He’s always forbidden to leave the Square 
when he goes out of doors. He wouldn’t have done 
it if papa and mamma hadn’t been away. I can’t 
make him mind me. But you must come back when 
everybody’s here, so that you can be thanked properly. 
I suppose you live somewhere near us?” 

Tom found it easiest to answer indirectly. “Your 
brother knows everything about me. I’ve seen him 
once or twice in the Square, and I’ve told him who I 
am.” 

“That’ll be very nice.” 

She held out her hand, and he accepted his dismis¬ 
sal. But before having closed the door behind him, 
he turned round to her as she stood under the oriental 
lamp. 

“I hope your brother will soon be all right again. 

207 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


I think they ought to give him a hot drink. He’s— 
he’s got big stuff in him when you come to find it out. 
He’ll make his way.” 

The transformation in her was electric. She ceased 
to be starched and competent, with a manner that put 
a thousand miles between him and her. The intelli¬ 
gence he had already noted in her face was aflame with 
a radiance beyond beauty. 

‘‘Oh, I’m so glad you can say that! No one outside 
the family has ever said it before. He’s a lamb !— 
and hardly anybody knows it.” 

She held out her hand again. As he took it he saw 
that her eyes, which he thought must be dark, were 
shining with a mist of tears. 

Going down the hill he repeated the two names: 
Maisie Danker! Hildred Ansley! They called up 
concepts so different that it was hard to think them of 
a common flesh. Though Masie Danker was a 
woman and Hildred Ansley but a child, there were 
points at which you could compare them. In the com¬ 
parison the advantages lay so richly with the girl in 
Louisburg Square that he fell back on the fact, stress¬ 
ing it with emphasis, that Maisie was the prettier. 
“After all,” he reflected, with comfort in the judg¬ 
ment, “that’s all that matters—to a man.” 


208 


XXV 


FEW days after his rescue of Guy Ansley from 



± A. the snow Tom Whitelaw found himself ad¬ 
dressed by that young gentleman’s sister, aged four¬ 
teen. She had plainly been watching for him as he 
went through Louisburg Square on his way from 
school. He had almost passed the Ansley steps before 
the tall, slight girl ran down them. 

“Oh, Mr. Whitelaw!” 

As it was the first time he had ever been honored 
with this prefix, he felt shocked and slightly foolish. 

“Yes, Miss Ansley?” 

A little breathless, she was, as he had noticed during 
their previous meeting, oddly grown up for her age, 
as one who takes responsibilities because there is no 
one else to bear them. She had the manner and se¬ 
lection of words of a woman of thirty. 

“I hope you won’t mind my waylaying you like this, 
but my brother would so much like to see you. 
You’ve been so awfully kind that I hope you’ll come 
up. He’s in bed, you know.” 

“When does he want me to come ?” 

“Well, now, if it isn’t troubling you too much. 
You see, my father and mother are coming home to¬ 
night, and he’d like to have a word with you before 
then. He won’t keep you more than a few minutes.” 

What Tom obscurely felt as an honor to himself 
she put as a favor he was doing them. It was an 


209 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


honor in that it admitted him a little farther into 
privacies which to him seemed tapestried with privi¬ 
lege and tradition. His one brief glimpse of their 
way of living had not made him discontented; it had 
only appealed to his faculty for awe. 

Awe was what he was aware of in following his 
young guide up the two red staircases to the room 
where the fat boy lay in bed. It was a mother’s- 
darling’s room, amusingly out of keeping with the 
pudgy, fleshy being whom it housed. Flowered paper 
on the walls, flowered hangings at the windows, flow¬ 
ered cretonnes on thickly upholstered armchairs, flow¬ 
ered silk on the duvet, garlands of flowers on the 
headboard and footboard of the virginal white bed¬ 
stead, made the piggy eyes and piggy cheeks, bolstered 
up by pillows of which some were trimmed with lace, 
the more funnily grotesque. Tom Whitelaw saw 
neither the fun nor the grotesqueness. All he could 
take in was the fact that beauty could gild the lily of 
this luxury. He knew nothing of beauty in his own 
denuded life. The room with two beds which he still 
shared with Honey at Mrs. Danker’s was not so much 
a sanctuary as a lair. 

The fat boy’s giggles were those of welcome, and 
also those of embarrassment. 

“After the scrap the other night got sick. Bron¬ 
chitis. Sit down.” 

Tom looked round to see what Miss Ansley was 
doing, but slipping away, she shut the door behind 
her. He sank into the flowered armchair nearest to 
the bed. The cracked girlish voice, which now had a 
wheeze in it, went on. 


210 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“They’ve wired for dad and mother, and they’re 
coming home to-night. Thought that before they got 
here I’d put you wise to something I want you to do.” 

Waiting for more, Tom sat silent, while the poor 
piggy face screwed itself up as if it meant to cry. 

“Dad and mother think that because I’m so fat I’m 
not a sport. But they’re dead wrong, see? I am a 
sport; only—only—” he was almost bursting into 
tears—“only the damn fat won’t let me get it out, 
see ?” 

“Yes, I see. I now you're a sport all right, old 
chap. Of course!” 

“Well, then, don't let them think the other thing, 
if they were to ask you.” 

“Ask me what?” 

“Ask you what the row was about the other after¬ 
noon. If they do that tell ’em we were only playing 
nigger-in-the-henhouse, or any other snow game. 
Don’t say I was knocked down by a lot of kids. 
Make ’em think I was having the devil’s own good 
time.” 

Tom Whitelaw knew this kind of humiliation. If 
he had not been through Guy Ansley's special phase 
of it he had been through others. 

“I’ll tell them what I saw. You and a lot of other 
fellows were skylarking in the snow, and I went by 
and got you to knock off. As I had to pass your 
door we came home together; but when I found you 
were wet to the skin I advised Miss Ansley to see that 
you hit the hay. That’s all there was to it.” 

In the version of the incident the strain of truth 
was sufficiently clear to allow the fat boy to approve 


211 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of it. He didn’t want to tell a lie, or to get Tom 
Whitelaw to tell a lie; but sport having been the ob¬ 
ject with which he had stolen away on that winter’s 
afternoon, it was easy to persuade himself that he had 
got it. Before Tom went away Guy Ansley under¬ 
stood that he would figure to his parents not as a 
victim but as something of a tough. 

“Gee, I wish I was you,” he grinned at Tom, who 
stood with his hands on the doorknob. 

“Me!” Tom was never so astonished in his life. 
His eyes rolled round the room. “How do you think 
I live?” 

“Oh, live! That’s nothing. What I’d like to do 
is to rough it. If they’d let me do that I shouldn’t 
be—I shouldn’t be wrapped up in fat like a mummy in 
—in whatever it is they’re wrapped up in. You can 
get away with anything on looks.” 

Sincere as was this tribute, it meant nothing to 
Tom Whitelaw, looks being no part of his preoccupa¬ 
tions. What, for the minute, he was thinking about 
was that nobody in the world seemed to be quite satis¬ 
fied. Here he was envying Guy Ansley his down quilt 
and his comfortable chairs, while Guy was envying 
him the rough-and-tumble of privation. 

“I shouldn’t look after him too much,” he said to 
the young sister whom, on coming downstairs, he 
found waiting at the front door. “There’s nothing 
wrong with him, except that he’s a little stout. He’s 
got lots of pluck.” 

Her face glowed. The glow brought out its in¬ 
telligence. The intelligence set into action a demure, 
mysterious charm, almost oriental. 


212 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


‘That’s just what I always say, and no one ever 
believes me. Mother makes a baby of him.” 

“If he could only fight his own way a little 
more . . 

“Oh, I do hope you’ll say that if they speak to you 
about him.” 

“I will if I ever get the chance, but . . ” 

“Oh, you must get the chance. I’ll make it. You 
see, you’re the only boy Guy’s ever taken a fancy to 
who didn’t treat him as a joke.” 

Tom assured her that her brother was not the only 
fellow who had a hard fight to put up during boyhood. 
He had seen them by the dozen who, just because of 
some trifling oddity, or unusual taste, were teased, 
worried, tormented, till school became a hell; but that 
didn’t keep them from turning out in the end to be 
the best sports among them all. Very likely the guy¬ 
ing did them good. He thought it might. He, Tom 
Whitelaw, had been through a lot of it, and now that 
he was sixteen he wasn’t sorry for himself a bit. He 
used to be sorry for himself, but . . . 

Seeing her for the second time, and in daylight, her 
features grew more distinct to him. He mused on 
them while continuing his way homeward. To say 
she was not pretty, as he had said the other night, was 
to use a form of words calling for amplification. It 
was the first time he had had occasion to observe that 
there are faces to which beauty is not important. 

“It’s the way she looks at you,” was his form of 
summing up; and yet for the way she looked at you 
he had no sufficient phraseology. 

That her eyes were long, narrow, and yellow-brown, 

213 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


ever so slightly Mongolian, he could see easily 
enough. That her nose was short, with a little tilt to 
it, was also a fact he had no difficulty in stating. As 
for her coloring, it was like that of a russet apple 
when the brown has a little gold in it and the red the 
brightness of carmine. Her hair was saved from 
being ugly by running to the quaint. Straight, black 
—black with a bluish gloss—it was worn not in the 
pigtail with which he was most familiar, but in two big 
plaits curved behind the ears, and secured he didn’t 
know how. She reminded him of a colored picture 
he had seen of a Cambodian girl, a resemblance en¬ 
hanced by the dark blue dress she wore, straight and 
formless down the length of her immature, boylike 
figure, and marked at the waistline by a circle of gold 
braid. 

But all these details were subordinate to something 
he had no power of defining. It was also something 
of which he was jealous as an injustice to Maisie 
Danker. If this girl had what poor Maisie had not 
it was because money gave her an advantage. It was 
the kind of advantage that wasn’t fair. Because it 
wasn’t fair, he felt it a challenge to his loyalty. 

Nevertheless, he could not accept Maisie’s offhand 
judgments when between five and six that afternoon 
he told her of the incident. 

This was at The Cherry Tree, one of those bowers 
of refreshment and dancing recently opened on their 
own slope of Beacon Hill. Bower was the word. 
What had once been the basement-kitchen and coal 
cellar of a small brick dwelling had been artfully con¬ 
verted into a long oval orchard of cherry trees, in 

214 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


paper luxuriance of foliage and blossom. Within the 
boskage, and under Chinese lanterns, there were 
tables; out in the open was a center oval cleared for 
dancing. Somewhere out of sight a cracked fiddle 
and a flat piano rasped out the tango or some shred of 
“rag.” With the briefest intervals for breath, this 
performance was continuous. The guests, who at 
that hour in the afternoon numbered no more than 
ten or twelve, forsook their refreshments to take the 
floor, or forsook the floor to return to their refresh¬ 
ments, just as the impulse moved them. They were 
chiefly working girls, young men at leisure because 
out of jobs, or sailors on shore. Except for an occa¬ 
sional hoarse or screechy laugh, the decorum was 
proper to solemnity. 

It was the fourth or fifth time Tom and Maisie had 
come to this retreat, nominally that Tom should learn 
to dance, but really that they should commune to¬ 
gether. To him the occasions were blissful for the 
reason that he had no one else in the world to com¬ 
mune with. To talk, to talk eagerly, to pour out the 
torrent of opinions boiling within him, meant more 
than that Maisie should understand him. Maisie 
didn’t understand him. She only laughed and joked 
with pretty inanity; but she let him talk. He talked 
about the books he liked and didn’t like, about the ad¬ 
vantages college men possessed over those who weren’t 
college men, about what he knew of the banking sys¬ 
tem, about the good you conferred on the world and 
yourself when you saved your money and invested it. 
In none of these subjects was she interested; but now 
and then she could get a turn to talk of the movies, 

215 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the new dances, and love. That these subjects made 
him uneasy was not, from Maisie’s point of view, a 
reason for avoiding them. 

Each was concerned with the other, but beyond 
the other each was concerned most of all with the 
mystery called Life. To live was what they were 
after, to live strongly and deeply and vividly and 
hotly, and to do it with the pinched means and narrow 
opportunities which were all they could command. In 
his secret heart Tom Whitelaw knew that Maisie 
Danker was not the girl out of all the world he would 
have sought of his own accord, while Maisie Danker 
was equally aware that this boy two years younger 
than herself couldn’t be the generous provider she. 
was looking for. They were only like shipwrecked 
passengers thrown together on an island. They must 
make the best of each other. No other girl, hardly 
any other human being except Honey, had entered 
the social isolation in which he was marooned, and 
as for her . . . 

She was so cheery and game that she never referred 
to her home experiences otherwise than allusively. 
From allusions he gathered that she was not with her 
aunt, Mrs. Danker, merely for pleasure or from pres¬ 
sure of affection. Her father was living; her step¬ 
mother was living too. There was a whole step- 
family of little brothers and sisters. Her father 
drank; her stepmother hated her; there was no room 
for her at home. All her life she had been knocked 
about. Even when she worked in the woolen mills 
she couldn’t keep her wages. She had had fellows, 
but none of them was ever any good. The best of 

216 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


them was a French Canadian who made big money, 
but he wouldn’t marry her unless she “turned Catho¬ 
lic.” “If he couldn’t give up his church for me I 
couldn’t give up mine for him; so there it was!” There 
was another fellow. . . . But as to him she said 
little. In speaking of him at all her face grew somber, 
which it did rarely. Either because he had failed her, 
or to get her out of his clutches, Tom was not sure 
which, her aunt had offered her a home for the winter. 
“Gee, it makes me laff,” was her own sole comment 
on her miseries. 

As Tom had dropped into the habit of telling her 
the small happenings of his uneventful life, he gave 
her, across the ice-cream sodas, an account of what 
had just occurred between himself and Guy and 
Hildred Ansley. 

She listened with what for her was gravity. 
“You’ve got to give some of them society girls the 
cold glassy eye,” she informed him, judicially. “If 
you don’t you’ll get it yourself, perhaps when you 
ain’t expecting it.” 

“Oh, but this is only a little girl, not more than 
fourteen. She just seems grown up. That’s the 
funny part of it.” 

“Not more than fourteen! Just seems grown up! 
Why, any of that bunch is forwarder at ten than I’d 
be at twenty. That’s one thing I’d never be, not if 
men was scarcer than blue raspberries—forward. 
And yet some of them society buds’ll be brassier than 
a knocker on a door.” 

“Oh, but this little Miss Ansley isn’t that sort.” 

“You wouldn’t know, not if she was running up 

217 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


and down your throat. Any girl can get hold of a 
man if she makes him think she needs him bad 
enough.” 

“It wasn’t she who needed me; it was her brother.” 

“A brother’ll do. A grandmother’d do. If you 
can’t bait your hook with a feather fly, you can take 
a bit of worm. But once a fella like you begins to 
take a shine to one of them . . .” 

“Shine to one of them! Me?” 

“Well, I suppose you’ll be taking a shine to some 
girl some day. Why shouldn't you?” 

“If I was going to do that . . .” 

The point at which he suspended his sentence was 
that which piqued her especially. Her eyes were 
provocative; her bright face alert. 

“Well, if you were going to do that—what of it?” 

The minute was one he was trying to evade. As 
clearly as if he were fifty, he knew the folly of getting 
himself involved in an emotional entanglement. 
Though he looked a young man, he was only a big 
boy. The most serious part of his preparation for 
life lay just ahead of him. If he didn’t go to 
college . . . 

And even more pressing than that consideration 
was the fact that in bringing Maisie to The Cherry 
Tree that afternoon he had come down to his last 
fifteen cents. At the beginning of their acquaintance 
he had had seven dollars and a half, hoarded preciously 
for needs connected with his education. Maisie had 
stampeded the whole treasure. To expect a man to 
spend money on her was as instinctive to Maisie as 
it is to a flower to expect the heavens to send rain. 

218 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She knew that at each mention of the movies or The 
Cherry Tree Tom squirmed in the anguish of financial 
disability, and that from the very hint of love he 
bolted like a colt from the bridle; but when it came 
to what she considered as her due she was pitiless. 

No epic has yet been written on the woes of the 
young man trying, on twenty-five dollars a week, let 
us say, to play up to the American girl’s taste for 
spending money. His self-denials, his sordid shifts, 
his mortifications, his sense at times that his most 
unselfish efforts have been scorned, might inspire a 
series of episodes as tensely dramatic as those of 
Spoon River. 

Tom had had one such experience on Maisie’s 
birthday. She had talked so much of her birthday 
that a present became indispensable. To meet this 
necessity the extreme of his expenditure could be no 
more than fifty cents. To find for fifty cents some¬ 
thing worthy of a lady already a connoisseur he 
ransacked Boston. Somewhere he had heard that 
a present might be modest so long as it was the best 
thing of its kind. The best thing of its kind he 
discovered was a toothbrush. It was not a common 
toothbrush except for the part that brushed the teeth. 
The handle was of mother-of-pearl, with an inlay in 
red enamel. The price was forty-five cents. 

Maisie laughed till she cried. “A toothbrush! A 
toothhrush\ For a present that’s something new! 
Gee, how the girls’ll laff when I go back to Nashua 
and tell them that that’s what a guy give me in 
Boston!” 

The humiliation of straitened means was the more 

219 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


galling to Tom Whitelaw, first because he was a 
giver, and then because he knew the value of money. 
With the value of money his mind was always play¬ 
ing, not from miserly motives, but from those of 
social economy. Each time he “blew in,” as he called 
it, a dollar on the girl he said to himself: “If I 
could have invested that dollar, it would have helped 
to run a factory, and have brought me in six or 
seven cents a year for all the rest of my life.” He 
made this calculation to mark the wastage he was 
strewing along his path in the wild pace he was 
running. 

There was something about Maisie which obliged 
you to play up to her. She was that sort of girl. 
If you didn’t play up, the mere laughter in her eye 
made you feel your lack of the manly qualities. It 
was not her scorn she brought into play; it was her 
sense of fun; but to the boy of sixteen her sense of 
fun was terrible. 

It was terrible, and yet it put him on his guard. 
He couldn’t wholly give in to her. If she could make 
moves he could make them too, and perhaps as 
adroitly. Her tantalizing question was ringing in 
his ears: If he was going to take a shine to any 
girl—what of it? 

“Oh, if I was going to do that,” he tossed off, “it 
would be to you.” 

“So that you haven't taken a shine to me—yet?” 

“It depends on what you mean by a shine.” 

“What do you mean by it yourself?” 

“I never have time to think.” This was a happy 

220 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


sentiment, and a safeguard. “It takes all I can do 
to remember that I’ve got to go to college.” 

“Damn college!” 

He was so unsophisticated that the expression 
startled him. He hadn’t supposed young ladies used 
it, not any more than they sneaked into barns or 
under bridges to smoke cigarettes. 

“What’s the use of damning college, when I’ve got 
to go?” 

“You haven’t got to go. A great strong fella like 
you ought to be earning his twenty per by this time. 
If you’ve got money in the bank, as you say you 
have . . 

He trembled already for his treasure. “I haven’t 
got it here. It’s in a savings bank in New York.” 

“Oh, that’s nothing! If you got it anywheres you 
can get at it with a check. Gee, if I had a few hun¬ 
dreds I’d have ten in my pocket at a time, I’ll be 
hanged if I wouldn’t. I don’t believe you’ve got it, 
see. I know a lot o’ guys that loves to put that sort 
of 'fluff over on a girl. Makes ’em feel big. But if 
they only knew what the girl thinks of them . . 
She jumped to her feet, allowing herself a little more 
vulgarity than she generally showed. “All right, old 
son, c’me awn! Let’s have another twist. And for 
Gaw'd’s sake don’t bring down that hoof of yours till 
I get a chance to pull my Cinderella-slipper out of 
your way.” 



221 


XXVI 


T T was after he had spent the first ten dollars he 
drew from his fund in New York that Tom felt 
the impulse to tell Honey of the way in which he was 
becoming involved with Maisie Danker. The ten- 
dollars had melted. In signing the formalities for 
drawing the amount, he expected to have enough to 
carry him along till spring, when Maisie’s visit was to 
end. He dreaded its ending, and yet it would have 
this element of relief in it; he would be able to keep 
his money. At a pinch he could spare ten dollars, 
though he couldn’t spare them very well. More than 
ten dollars . . . 

And before he knew it the ten dollars had vanished 
as if into air. Once Maisie knew what he had done 
her caprices multiplied. To her as to him ten dollars 
to ‘‘blow in”—she used the airy expression too—was 
a small fortune. It was only their instincts that were 
different. His was to let it go slowly, since the 
spending of a penny was against the protests of his 
conscience; hers to make away with it. If Tom could 
“draw the juice” for a first ten, he could draw it for 
a second, and for a third and a fourth after that. 
It was not extravagance that whipped her on; it was 
joy of life. 

Tom's impulse to tell Honey was not acted on. It 
was not acted on after he drew the second ten; nor 


222 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


after he drew the third. After he had drawn the 
fourth his unhappiness became so great that he sought 
a confidant. 

And yet his unhappiness was not absolute; it was 
rather a poisoned bliss. Had Maisie been content 
with what he could afford, the winter would have 
been like one in Paradise. But almost before he him¬ 
self was aware of the promptings of thrift, she van¬ 
quished them with her ridicule. 

“There’s nothing I hate so much as anything cheap. 
If a fella can’t give me what I like, he can keep 
away.” 

Time and time again Tom swore he would keep 
away. He did keep away, for a day, for two or 
three days in succession. Then she would meet him 
in the dark hallway, and, twining her arms around 
his neck without a word, would give him one of 
those kisses on the lips which thrilled him into sub¬ 
jection. He would be guilty of any folly for her then, 
because he couldn’t help himself. Ten, twenty, thirty, 
forty dollars, all the hoarded inheritance from the 
Martin Quidmore who was already a dim memory, 
would be well thrown away if only she would kiss 
him once again. 

He lost the healthy diversion which might have 
reached him through the Ansleys because they had 
taken the fat boy to Florida. Tom learned that from 
little Miss Ansley a few days after the return of the 
father and mother from New York. One afternoon 
as both were coming from their schools they had met 
on their way toward Louisburg Square. Even in 
her outdoor dress, she was quaintly grown-up and 

22*3 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Cambodian. A rough brown tweed had a little gold 
and a little red in it; a brown turban not unlike a fez 
bore on the left a small red wing tipped with a golden 
line. Maisie would have emphasized the red; she 
would have been vivid, eager to be noticed. This girl 
didn’t need that kind of advertisement. 

Seeing her before she saw him, he wondered 
whether she would give him any sign of recognition. 
At Harfrey the girls whom he saw at the Tollivants, 
and who proclaimed themselves “exclusive,” always 
forgot him when they met him on the street. This 
had hurt him. He waited in some trepidation now, 
fearing to be hurt again. But when she saw him she 
nodded and smiled. 

“Guy’s better,” she said, without greeting, “and 
we’re all going off to Florida to-morrow. Guy and 
I don’t want to go a bit; but mother’s afraid of his 
catching cold, and father has to be in Washington, 
anyhow. So we’re off.” 

Though he walked by her side for no more than 
a few yards, Tom was touched by her friendliness. 
She was the first girl of that section of the world 
for which he had only the term “society” who had 
not been ashamed to be seen with him in a street. 
Little Miss Ansley even paused for a minute at the 
foot of her steps while they exchanged remarks about 
their schools. She went to Miss Winslow’s. She 
liked her school. She was sorry to be going away 
as it would give her such a lot of back work to make 
up. She might go to Radcliffe when Guy went to 
Harvard, but so far her mother was opposed to it. 
In these casual observations she seemed to Tom to 

224 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


lose something of her air of being a woman of the 
world. On his own side he lost a little of his awe 
of her. 

The snuffing out of this interest threw him back 
on the easing' of his heart by confidence. It was 
not confidence alone; it was also confession. He was 
deceiving Honey, and to go on deceiving Honey began 
to seem to him baser than dishonor. Had Honey 
been his father, it would have been different. Fathers 
worked for their sons as a matter of course, and 
almost as a matter of course expected that t’heir sons 
would play them false. There was no reason why 
Honey should work for him; and since Honey did 
work for him, there was every reason why he who 
reaped the benefit should be loyal. He was not loyal. 
He had even reached the point, and he cursed himself 
for reaching it, at which Honey was an Old Man of 
the Sea fastened on his back. 

He told himself that this was the damnedest in¬ 
gratitude; and yet he couldn’t tell himself that it 
wasn’t so. It was. There were days when Honey’s 
way of speaking, Honey’s way of eating, the smell of 
Honey’s person, and the black patch on his eye, re¬ 
volted him. Here he was, a great lump of a fellow 
sixteen years of age, and dependent for everything, 
for everything on a rough dock laborer who had been 
a burglar and a convict. It was preposterous. Had 
he jumped into this situation he would not have borne 
it for a week. But he had not jumped into it; it had 
grown. It had grown round him. It held him now 
as if with tentacles. He couldn’t break away from it. 

And yet Honey and he were bound to grow apart. 

225 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was in the nature of the case that it should be so. 
Always of a texture finer than Honey’s, schooling, 
association, and habits of mind were working together 
to refine the grain, while Honey was growing coarser. 
His work, Tom reasoned, kept him not only in a rut 
but in a brutalizing rut. Loading and unloading, 
unloading and re-loading, he had less use for his mind 
than in the days of his freebooting. Then a wild ass 
of the desert, he was now harnessed to a dray with 
no relief from hauling it. From morning to night 
he hauled; from night to morning he was stupefied 
with weariness. In on this stupefaction Tom found 
it more and more difficult to break. He was agog 
with interests and ideas; for neither interests nor 
ideas had Honey any room. 

Nor had he, so far as Tom could judge, any room 
for affection. On the contrary, he repelled it. “Don’t 
you go for to think that I’ve give up bein’ a socialist 
because I got a soft side. No, sir! That wouldn’t 
be it at all. What reely made me do it was because it 
didn’t pay. I’d make big money now and then; but 
once I’d fixed the police, the lawyers, and nine times 
out o’ ten the judge, I wouldn’t have hardly nothink 
for meself. If out o’ every hundred dollars I was 
able to pocket twenty-five it’d be as much as ever. 
This ’ere job don’t pay as well to start with; but then 
it haven’t no expenses.” 

Self-interest and a vague sense of responsibility 
were all he ever admitted as a key to his benevolence. 
“It’s along o’ my bein’ an Englishman. You can’t 
get an Englishman ’arclly ever to be satisfied a’mindin’ 
of his own business. Ten to one he’ll do that and 

226 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


mind somebody else’s at the same time. A kind o’ 
curse that’s on ’em, I often thinks. Once when I was 
doin’ a bit—might ’a been at Sing Sing—a guy come 
along to entertain us. Recited poetry at us. And 
I recolleck he chewed to beat the band over a piece he 
called, ‘The White Man’s Burden.’ Well, that’s what 
you are, Kid. You’re my White Man’s Burden. I 
can’t chuck yer, nor nothink. I just got to carry yer 
till yer can git along without me; and then I’ll quit. 
The old bunch’ll be as glad to see me back as I’ll be 
to go. There’s just one thing I want yer to remem¬ 
ber, Kid, that when yer’ve got yer eddication there 
won't be nothink to bind me to you, nor—” he held 
himself very straight, bringing out his words with 
a brutal firmness —“nor you to me. Yer’ll know I’ll 
be as glad to go the one way as you’ll be to go the 
t’other, so there won’t be no ’ard feelin’ on both 
sides.” 

It was a Sunday night. Tom had taken his troubles 
to bed with him, because he had nowhere else to take 
them. In bed you struck a truce with life. You 
suspended operations, at least for a few hours. You 
could sleep; you could postpone. He slept as a rule 
so soundly, and so straight through the night, that, 
hunted as he was by care, he had once in the twenty- 
four hours a refuge in which the fiendish thing 
couldn’t overtake him. 

It had been a trying Sunday because Maisie had 
tempted him to a wilder than usual extravagance. 
There was enough snow on the ground for sleighing. 
She had been used to sleighing in Nashua. The sing- 

227 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


ing of runners and the jingling of bells, as a sleigh 
slid joyously past her, awakened her longing for the 
sport. By coaxing, by teasing, by crying a little, and, 
worst of all, by making game of him, she had induced 
him to find a place where he could hire a sleigh and 
take her for a ride. 

Snow having turned to rain, and rain to frost, the 
landscape through which they drove was made of 
crystal. Every tree was as a tree of glass, sparkling 
in the sun. A deep blue sky, a keen dry wind, a 
little horse which enjoyed the outing as briskly as 
Maisie herself, made the two hours vibrant with the 
ecstasy of cold. All Tom’s nerves were taut with 
the pleasure of the motion, of the air, of the skill, 
acquired chiefly at Bere, with which he managed the 
spirited young nag. The knowledge of what it was 
costing him he was able to thrust aside. He would 
enjoy the moment, and face the reckoning afterward. 
When he did face the reckoning, he found that of 
his fourth ten dollars he had spent six dollars and 
fifty-seven cents. Only three days earlier he had had 
the crisp clean bill unbroken in his hand. . . . 

He had been hardly able to eat his supper, and after 
supper the usual two hours of study to which he gave 
himself on Sunday nights were as time thrown away. 
Luckily, Honey's consideration left him the room to 
himself. Honey was like that. If Tom had to work, 
Honey effaced himself, in summer by sitting on the 
doorstep, in winter by going to bed. Much of Tom's 
wrestling with Virgil was carried on to the tune of 
Honey’s snores. 

This being Sunday evening, and Honey less tired 

228 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


than on the days on which he worked, he had gone 
to “chew the rag,” as he phrased it, with a little Jew 
tailor, who lived next door to Mrs. Danker. Tom 
was aware that behind this the motive was not love 
for the Jew tailor, but zeal that he, Tom, should be 
interfered with as little as possible in his eddication. 
Tom’s eddication was as much an obsession to Honey 
as it was to Tom himself. It was an overmastering 
compulsion, like that which sent Peary to find the 
North Pole, Scott to find the South one, and Liv¬ 
ingstone and Stanley to cross Africa. What he had 
to gain by it had no place in his calculation. A 
machine wound up, and going automatically, could 
not be more set on its purpose than Lemuel Honey- 
bun on his. 

But to-night his absenting of himself was of no 
help to Tom in giving his mind to the translation from 
English into Latin on which he was engaged. When 
he found himself rendering the expression “in the 
meantime” by the words in turpe tempore, he pushed 
books and paper away from him, with a bitter, em¬ 
phatic, “Damn!” 

Though it was only nine, there was nothing for 
it but to go to bed. In bed he would sleep and forget. 
He always did. Putting out the gas, and pulling the 
bedclothes up around his ears, he mentally waved the 
white flag to his carking enemy. 

But the carking enemy didn’t heed the white flag; 
he came on just the same. For the first time in his 
life Tom Whitelaw couldn’t sleep. Rolling from side 
to side, he groaned and swore at the refusal of relief 
to come to him. He was still wide awake when about 

229 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


half past ten Honey came in and re-lit the gas, sur¬ 
prised to see the boy already with his face turned to 
the wall. Not to disturb him, Honey moved round 
the room on tiptoe. 

Tom lay still, his eyes closed. He loathed this 
proximity, this sharing of one room. In the two 
previous years he hadn’t minded it. But he was older 
now, almost a man, able to take care of himself. Not 
only was he growing more fastidious, but the self- 
consciousness we know as modesty was bringing to 
the over-intimate a new kind of discomfort. Long 
meaning to propose two small separate rooms as not 
much dearer than the larger one, he had not yet come 
to it, partly through unwillingness to add anything to 
their expenses, and partly through fear of hurting 
Honey’s feelings. But to-night the lack of privacy 
gave the outlet of exasperation to his less tangible 
discontents. 

He rolled over on his back. One gas jet spluttered 
in the antiquated chandelier. Under it a small deal 
table was heaped with his books and strewn with his 
papers. Beside it stood an old armchair stained with 
the stains of many lodgers’ use, the entrails of the 
seat protruding horribly between the legs. Two small 
chairs of the kitchen type, a wash-stand, a chest of 
drawers with a mirror hung above it, two or three 
flimsy rugs, and the iron cots on which they slept, 
made a setting for Honey, who sat beneath the gas¬ 
light, sewing a button on his undershirt. Turned in 
profile toward Tom, and wearing nothing but his 
drawers and socks, he bent above his work with the 
patience of a concentrated mind. He was really a fine 

230 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


figure of a man, brawny, hairy, spare, muscled like 
an athlete, a Rodin’s Thinker all but the thought, yet 
irritating Tom as the embodiment of this penury. 

So not from an impulse of confession, but to ease 
the suffering of his nerves, Tom told something about 
Maisie Danker. It was only something. He told of 
the friendship, of the dancing lessons, of the movies, 
of the sleigh-ride that afternoon, of the forty dollars 
drawn from the bank. He said nothing of their 
kisses, nor of the frenzy which he thought might be 
love. Honey pulled his needle up through the hole, 
and pushed it back again, neither asking questions 
nor looking up. 

“I guess we’ll move,” was his only comment, when 
the boy had finished the halting tale. 

This quietness excited Tom the more. “What do 
you want to move for?” 

“Because there’s dangers what the on’y thing you 
can do to fight ’em is to run away.” 

“Who said anything about danger? Do you 
suppose . . .?” 

In sticking in his needle Honey handled the imple¬ 
ment as if it were an awl. “Do I suppose she’s playin’ 
the dooce with yer? No, Kid. She don’t have to. 
You’re playin’ the dooce with yerself. It’s yer age. 
Sixteen is a terr’ble imagination age.” 

“Oh, if you think I’m framing the whole thing 

yy 

• • • 

“No, I don’t. Yer believes it all right. On’y it 
ain’t quite so bad as what yer think. It don’t do to 
be too delikit with women. Got to bat ’em away as 
if they was flies, when they bother yer too much. 

231 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Once let a woman in on yer game and yer ’and can 
be queered for good.” 

“Did I say anything about letting a woman in on 
my game?” 

“No, yer on’y said she’d slipped in. It’s too late 
now to keep her out. She’s made the diff’rence.” 

“What difference?” 

Honey threaded his needle laboriously, held up the 
end of the thread to moisten it with his lips, and tied 
a knot in it. “The diff’rence in you. Yer ain’t the 
same young feller what yer was six months ago. You 
and me has been like one,” he went on, placidly. 
“Now we’re two. Been two this spell back. Couldn’t 
make it out, no more’n Billy-be-damned; and now I 
see. The first girl.” 

Tom lashed about the bed. 

“It was bound to come; and that’s why—yer’ve 
arsked me about it onst or twice, so I may as well tell 
yer—that’s why I never lets meself get fond o’ yer. 
Could ’a did it just as easy as not. When a man 
gits to my age a young boy what’s next o’ kin to 
him—why, he’ll seem like as if ’twould be his son. 
But I wouldn’t be ketched. ‘Honey,’ I says to meself, 
‘the first girl and you’ll be dished.’ ” 

“Oh, go to blazes!” 

Having finished his button, Honey made it doubly 
secure by winding the thread around it. “Not that 
I blame yer, Kiddy. I ain’t never led no celebrant 
life meself, not till I had to take you on, and cut out 
all low company what wouldn’t ’a been good for you. 
But I figured it out that we might ’a got yer through 
college before yer fell for it. Well, we ain’t. Maybe 

232 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


now we’ll not git yer to college at all. But we’ll make 
a shy at it. We’ll move.” 

“If you think that by moving you’ll keep me from 
seeing her again ...” 

“No, son, not no more’n I could keep yer from 
cuttin’ yer throat by lockin’ up yer razor. Yer could 
git another razor. I know that. All the same, it’d 
be up to me, wouldn’t it, not to leave no razors layin’ 
round the room, where yer could put yer ’and on 
’em?” 

This settling of his destiny over his head angered 
Tom especially. 

“I can save you the trouble of having me on your 
mind any more. To-morrow I’ll be out on my own. 
I’m going to be a man.” 

“Sure, you’re going to be a man—in time. But 
yer ain’t a man yet.” 

“I’m sixteen. I can do what any other fellow of 
sixteen can do.” 

“No fella of sixteen can do much.” 

“He can earn a living.” 

“He can earn part of a livin’. How many boys 
of sixteen did yer ever know that could swing clear of 
home and friends and everythink, and feed and clothe 
and launder theirselves on what they made out’n their 
job?” 

“Well, I can try, can’t I?” 

“Oh, yes, yer can try, Kid. But if you was me, 
I wouldn’t cut loose from nobody, not till I’d got me 
’and in.” 

Tom raised himself on his elbow, his eyes, beneath 

A33 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


their protruding horizontal eyebrows, aglitter with 
the wrath which puts life and the world out of focus. 

“I am going to cut loose. Pm going to be my own 
master.” 

“Are you, Kid? How much of yer own master 
do yer expect to be, on the ten or twelve per yer’ll git 
to begin with —if yer gits that?” 

“Even if it was only five or six per, I’d be making it 
myself.” 

“And what about college?” 

“College—hell!” 

The boy fell back on his pillow. Feeling he had 
delivered his ultimatum, he waited for a reply. But 
Honey only stowed away his sewing materials in a 
little black box, after which he pulled off the articles 
of clothing he continued to wear, and set about his 
toilet for the night. At the sound of his splashing 
water on his face Tom muttered to himself: “God, 
another night of this will kill me.” 

Honey spoke through the muffling of the towel, 
while he dried his face. “Isn’t all this fuss what I’m 
tellin’ yer? The minute a girl gits in on a young 
feller’s life there’s hell to pay. That’s why I’d like 
yer to steer clear of ’em as long as yer can hold 
out.” 

Tom shut his eyes, buried his face in the pillow, 
and affected not to hear. 

“They don’t mean to do no harm; they’re just 
naterally troublesome. Seems as if they was born 
that way, and couldn’t ’elp theirselves. There’s a lot 
of ’em as is never satisfied till they've got a man like 
a jumpin’-jack, what all they need to do is to pull 

234 



THE HAPPY ISLES 

the string to make him jig. This girl is one o’ them 
kind.” 

Tom continued to hold his peace. 

“I’ve saw her. Pretty little thing she is all right. 
But give her two or three years. Lord love you, Kid, 
she’ll be as washed out then as one of her own ribbons 
after a hard rain. And yet them is the kind that 
most young fellers’ll run after, like a pup’ll run after 
a squirrel.” 

Tom was startled. The figure of speech had been 
used to him before. He could hear it drawled in a 
tired voice, soft and velvety. Ir was queer what con¬ 
clusions about women these grown men came to! 
Quidmore had thought them as dangerous as Honey, 
and warned him against them much as Honey was 
doing now. Mrs. Quidmore had once been what 
Maisie was at that minute, and yet as he, Tom, 
remembered her . . . But Honey was going on again, 
spluttering his words as he brushed his teeth. 

“It can be awful easy to git mixed up with a girl, 
and awful hard to git unmixed. She’ll put a man in 
a hole where he can’t help doin’ somethink foolish, 
and then make out as what she’ve got a claim on him. 
There’s a lot o’ talk about women bein’ the prey o’ 
men; but for one woman as I’ve ever saw that way 
I’ve saw a hundred men as was the prey o’ women. 
Now when a girl of eighteen gits a young boy like 
you to spend the money as he's saved for his eddica- 
tion . . .” 

The boy sprang up in bed, hammering the bed¬ 
clothes. “Don’t you say anything against her. I 
won’t listen to it.” 


235 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


With that supple tread which always made Tom 
think of one who could easily slip through windows, 
Honey walked to the closet where he kept his night¬ 
shirt. “’Tain’t nothink agin her, Kid. Was on’y 
goin’ to say that a girl what’ll git a young boy to do 
that shows what she is. And yer did spend the money 
a-takin’ her about, now didn’t yer?” 

Tom fell back upon his pillow. Putting out the 
gas, Honey threw himself on his creaking cot. 

“You’re a free boy, Kiddy,” he went on, while 
arranging the sheet and blanket as he liked them. “If 
yer wants to beat it to-morrer, beat it away. Don’t 
stop because yer’ll be afraid I’ll miss yer. Wasn’t 
never no hand for missin’ no one, and don’t mean to 
begin. What I’d ’a liked ’d have been to fill yer up 
with eddication so that yer could jaw to beat the best 
of ’em, if yer turned out to be the Whitelaw baby.” 

Tom had almost forgotten who the Whitelaw baby 
was. Not since that Sunday afternoon nearly three 
years ago had Honey ever mentioned him. The 
memory having come back, he made an inarticulate 
sound of impatience, finally snuggling to sleep. 

He tried to think of Maisie, to conjure up the rose 
in her cheeks, the laughter in her eyes; but all he saw, 
as he drifted into dreams, was the quaint Cambodian 
face of little Hildred Ansley. Only once did Honey 
speak again, muttering, as he too fell asleep: 

“We’ll move.” 


236 


XXVII 


PHEY did not move for the reason that Maisie 
did. Not for forty-eight hours did Tom learn 
of her departure. As Mrs. Danker kept not a board¬ 
ing house but a rooming house, and her guests went 
days at a time without seeing their landlady, he had no 
sources of information when Maisie, as she some¬ 
times did, kept herself out of sight. Watching for 
her on the Monday and the Tuesday following his 
Sunday night talk with Honey, he thought it strange 
that she never appeared in the hallway, though he 
had no cause to be alarmed. He was going to leave 
Honey, get a job, and be independent. When he had 
added a little more to his fund in New York, he would 
propose to Maisie, and marry her if she would take 
him. He would be eighteen, perhaps nineteen by the 
time he was able to do this, an early, but not an im¬ 
possible, age at which to be a husband. 

On both these days he had gone to school from 
force of habit, but on the Wednesday he was sur¬ 
prised by a letter. Though he had never seen Maisie’s 
writing, the postmark said Nashua. Before tearing 
the envelope he had a premonition of her flight. 

A telegram on Monday morning had bidden her 
come home at once, as her stepmother was dying. She 
had died. Till her father married again, which she 
supposed would be soon, she would have to care for 

237 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the four little brothers and sisters. That was all. 
On paper Maisie was laconic. 

Since his mother’s death no revolution in his inner 
life had upset the boy like this. The Tollivant ex¬ 
perience had only left him a little hard and skeptical; 
that with the Quidmores had passed like the rain and 
the snow, scarcely affecting him. With Honey his 
need for affection had always been unfed, and for 
reasons he could not fathom. Maisie had made the 
give and take of life easy, natural. She had her limi¬ 
tations, her crude, and sometimes her cruel, insist¬ 
ences; but she liked him. He loved her. He was 
ready to say it now, because of the blank her loss had 
hollowed in his life. For the unformed, growing 
hot-blooded human thing to have nothing on which to 
spend itself is anguish. Sitting down at his deal 
table, he wrote to her out of a heart fuller and more 
passionate than poor Maisie could ever have under¬ 
stood. 

All he had been planning in rebellion against fate he 
poured out now as devotion. He had meant to cut 
loose, to go to work, to live on nothing, to save his 
money, and be ready to marry her in a year or two. 
And yet, on second thoughts, if he went through 
college, their position in the end would be so much 
better that perhaps the original plan was the best one. 
He thought only of her, and of what would make 
her happiest. He loved her—loved her—loved her. 

Maisie wrote back that she saw no harm in their 
being engaged, and she wouldn’t press him for a ring 
till he felt himself able to give her one. For herself 
she didn’t care, but if she told the girls she was 

238 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


engaged to a fellow, and had no ring to corroborate 
her word, she wouldn’t be believed. In case he ever 
felt equal to the purchase she was sending him the 
size in the circlet of thread inclosed. 

Tom was heroic. He had never thought of a ring, 
and a ring would mean more money. Be it so! He 
would spend more money. Pie would spend more 
money if he mortgaged his whole future to procure 
it. Maisie should not be shamed among her friends 
in Nashua. 

Giving all his free hours to wandering about and 
pricing rings, he found them less expensive than he 
feared. Maisie having once confided to him her 
longing for a diamond, a diamond he meant to make 
it if it cost him fifty dollars. But he found one for 
twenty, as big as a small pea, and flashing in the sun¬ 
shine like a lighthouse. The young Jew who sold 
it assured him that it would have cost a hundred, 
except for a tiny flaw which only an expert could 
detect. On its reception Maisie was delighted. He 
felt himself almost a married man. 

The rest of the winter went by peaceably. With 
Honey he declared a truce of God. He would go to 
college, and live up to all that had been planned; but 
Honey must look on his own self-sacrifice as of the 
nature of a loan which would be repaid. Honey was 
ready to promise anything, while, in the hope of 
getting through college in three years instead of four, 
Tom worked with increased zeal. Then, one day, 
when spring had come round, he stumbled on Guy 
and Hildred Ansley. 

It was in Louisburg Square, as usual. Plaving 

239 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


arrived from the south the night before, they were 
sailing soon for Europe. 

“Rotten luck!” the fat boy complained. “Got to 
trail a tutor along too, so that I shan’t fall down on 
the Harvard exam when it comes. Wish I was you.” 

“If you were Mr. Whitelaw, Guy,” his sister re¬ 
minded him, “you’d find something else to worry 
you. We all have our troubles, haven’t we, Mr. 
Whitelaw?” 

“She’s got nothing to worry her,” the brother pro¬ 
tested. “If she was me, with mother scared all the 
time that I’ll be too hot or too cold or too tired or 
too hungry, or that some damn thing or other'll make 
me sick . . .” 

“All the same,” Tom broke in, “it’s something to 
have a mother to make a fuss.” 

The girl looked sympathetic. “You haven’t, have 
you ?” 

“Oh, I get along.” 

“Guy says you live with a guardian.” 

“You may call him a guardian if you like, but the 
word is too big. You only have a guardian when 
you’ve something to guard, and I haven’t anything.” 

“Yes, but how did you ever . . .?” 

Once more Tom said to himself, “It’s the way she 
looks at you.” He knew what she was trying to ask 
him, and in order to be open and aboveboard, he gave 
her the few main facts of his life. He did it briefly, 
hurriedly, throwing emphasis only on the point that, 
to keep him from becoming a State ward the second 
time, his stevedore friend had brought him to Boston 
and sent him to school. 


240 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“He must be an awfully good man!” 

He was going to tell her that he was when the 
brother gave the talk another twist. 

“What are you going to do in your holidays?” 

“Work, if I can find a job.” 

“What kind of job?” 

He explained that for the last two summers he 
had worked round the Quincy and Faneuil Hall 
markets, but that he had outgrown them. A two- 
fisted, he-man’s job was what he would look for now, 
and had no doubt that he would get it. 

“After you’ve left Harvard what are you going to 
be?” 

“Banking’s what I’d like best, but most likely I’ll 
have to make it barbering. What are you going to 
be yourself ?” 

“Oh, I’ve got to be a corporation lawyer. My 
luck! Just because dad’ll have the business to take 
me into.” 

“But what would you like better?” 

The piggy face broke into one of its captivating 
grins. “Hanged if I know, unless it'd be an orphan 
and an only child.” 

The meeting was important because of what it 
led to. A few days later Tom heard the wheezy girl¬ 
ish voice calling behind him in the street: “Tom! 
Tom!” 

He turned and walked back. During the winter 
the fat boy had expanded, not so much in height as 
in girth and jelliness. He came up, puffing from his 
run. 

“Can you drive a car?” 

241 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tom hesitated. “I don’t know that you’d call it 
driving a car. I can drive—after a fashion. Mr. 
Quidmore used to let me run his Ford, when we 
were alone in it, and no one was looking. Since then 
I’ve sometimes driven the market delivery teams for 
a block or two, nothing much, just to see what it 
was like. I know I could pick it up with a few 
lessons. I’m a natural driver—a horse or anything. • 
Why?” 

“Because my old man said that if you could drive, 
he might help you get your summer’s job.” 

“Where? What kind of job?” 

“I don’t know. Fie said that if you wanted to talk 
it over to come round to our house this evening at 
nine o'clock.” 

At nine that evening Tom was shown up into 
another of those rooms which marked the gulf between 
his own way of living and that of people like the 
Ansleys, and at the same time woke the atavistic pang. 
His impression was only a blurred one of, comfort, 
color, shaded lights, and richness. From the many 
books he judged that it was what they would call the 
library, but any judgment was subconscious because 
the human presences came first. A man wearing a 
dinner jacket and scanning an evening paper was 
sunk into one deep armchair; in another a lady, demi- 
decolletee, was reading a book. It was his first inti¬ 
mation that people ever wore what he called “dress- 
clothes” when dining only with their families. 

He was announced by Pilcher, who had led him 
upstairs. “This is the young man, sir.” 

Having reached something like friendly terms with 

242 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the son and daughter, Tom had expected from the 
parents the kind of courtesy shown to strangers when 
you shake hands with them and ask them to sit down. 
Mr. Ansley only let the paper drop to his knees with 
an “Oh!” in response to the butler, and looked up. 

“You're the young fellow my son has spoken of. 
He tells me you can drive a car.” 

Repeating what he had already said to Guy as to 
his experience with cars, Tom expressed confidence in 
his ability to obtain a license, if it should become 
worth his while. 

“It wouldn’t be difficult driving such as you get in 
the crowded parts of a city. It would be chiefly 
station work, over country roads.” 

He explained himself further. In the New Hamp¬ 
shire summer colony where the Ansleys had their 
place, the residents were turning a large country 
house into an inn which would be like a oub, or a 
club which would be like an inn. It would not be 
open to ordinary travelers, since ordinary travelers 
would bring in people whom they didn’t want. The 
guests would be their own friends, duly invited or 
introduced. He, Mr. Ansley, was chairman of the 
motor-car committee, but as he was going to Europe 
he was taking up the matter in advance. On general 
grounds he would have preferred an older man and 
one with more experience, but the inn-club was a new 
undertaking and not too well financed. More experi¬ 
enced men would cost more money. For the station 
work they could afford but eighty dollars a month, 
with a room in the garage, and board. Moreover, 
the jobs they could offer being only for the summer, 

243 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the promoters hoped that a few young men and women 
working for their own education might take advantage 
of the scheme. 

Eighty dollars a month, with a room to himself, 
even if it had c ily been in a stable, and board in 
addition, glittered before Tom's eyes like Aladdin’s 
treasure house. Having thanked Mr. Ansley for the 
kind suggestion, he assured him he could give satis¬ 
faction if taken on. All the chauffeurs who had let 
him have a few minutes at the steering-wheel had 
told him that he possessed the eye, the nerve, and the 
quickness which make a good driver, in addition to 
which he knew that he did himself. 

“How old are you?” 

It was a question Tom always found difficult to 
answer. He could remember when his birthday had 
been on the fifth of March; but his mother had told 
him that that had been Grade's birthday, and had 
changed his own to September. Later she had shifted 
to May, to a day, so she told him, when all the 
nurses had had their children in the Park, and the 
lilacs had been in bloom. He had never asked her 
the year, not having come to reckoning in years before 
she was taken from him. Though latterly he had 
been putting his birthday in May, he now shifted back 
to March, so as to make himself older. 

“I’m seventeen, sir.” 

Mrs. Ansley spoke for the first time. “He looks 
more than that, doesn’t he?” 

Tom turned to the lady who filled a large arm¬ 
chair with a person suggesting the quaking, flabby 

244 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


consistency of corn-starch pudding. “I suppose that’s 
because I’ve knocked about so much.” 

“The hard school does give you experience, doesn’t 
it, but it’s a cruel school.” 

He remembered his promise to Guy, if ever he got 
the opportunity. “Boys can stand a good deal of 
cruelty, ma’am. Nine times out of ten it does them 
good.” 

“Still there’s always a tenth case.” 

He smiled. “I think I ought to have made it ten 
times out of ten. I never saw the boy yet who wasn’t 
all the better for fighting his way along.” 

Mrs. Ansley’s mouth screwed itself up like Guy’s 
when it looked as if he were going to cry. “Fight? 
Why, I think fighting’s something horrid. Why can’t 
boys treat each other like gentlemen?” 

“I suppose, ma’am, because they’re not gentle¬ 
men.” 

The cornstarch pudding stiffened to the firmness of 
ice-cream. “Excuse me! My boy couldn’t be any¬ 
thing but a gentleman.” 

“He couldn’t be anything but a sport. He is a 
fighter, ma’am—when he gets the chance.” 

“Then I hope he won’t often get it.” 

“But, Sunshine,” Mr. Ansley intervened, “you don't 
make any allowance for differences in standards. 
You’re a woman of forty-five. Guy’s a boy of six¬ 
teen—he’s practically seventeen, like Whitelaw here— 
your name is Whitelaw, isn’t it?—and yet you want 
him to have the same tastes and ways as yourself.” 

“I don’t want him to have brutal tastes and ways.” 

“It’s a pretty brutal world, ma’am, and if he’s going 

245 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to take his place he’ll have to get used to being ham¬ 
mered and hammering back.” 

“Which is what I object to. If you train boys to 
be courteous with each other from the start . . 

“They’ll be quite ladylike when they get into the 
stock exchange or the prize ring. Look here, Sun¬ 
shine ! The country’s over feminized as it is. It’s 
run by women, or by men who think as women, or 
by men who’re afraid of women. Congress is full 
of them; the courts are full of them; the churches— 
the churches above all!—are full of them; and you’d 
make it worse. If Guy hadn’t the stuff in him that 
he has . . 

Mrs. Ansley was more than ever like a cornstarch 
pudding, quivering and undulating, when she rose. 
“You make it very hard for me, Philip. I was going 
to ask Whitelaw, here, if when he’s anywhere where 
Guy is—I know Guy will have to go among young 
men, of course—he’d keep an eye on him, and protect 
him.” 

“He doesn’t need protection, ma’am. He can take 
his own part as easily as I can take mine. If there’s 
a row he likes to be in it; and if he’s licked he doesn’t 
mind it. If he only had a chance . . .” 

She raised her left hand palm outward, in a gesture 
of protest. “Thank you! I’m not asking advice as 
to my own son.” 

Sailing from the room with the circumambient dig¬ 
nity of ladies when they wore the crinoline, she left 
Tom with the crestfallen sense of presumption. Half 
expecting to be ordered from the room, he turned 
toward his host, who, however, simply reverted to 

246 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the subject of the summer. He told Tom where he 
could have lessons in driving, adding that he would 
charge them to club expenses, as he would the uniform 
Tom would have to wear. When Mr. Ansley picked 
up his paper the young man knew the interview was 
over. With a half-articulate, “Good-night, sir,” to 
which there was no response, he turned and left the 
room. 

The occasion left him with much to think of, chiefly 
on his own account. It marked his status more clearly 
than anything that had happened to him yet. He had 
not been shaken hands with; he had not been asked to 
sit down. He had not been greeted on arriving; his 
“good-night” had not been acknowledged when he 
went away. Mr. Ansley had called him Whitelaw, 
which was all very well; but when Mrs. Ansley did it, 
the use of the name was significant. This must be 
the way in which rich people treated their servants. 

Here he had to reason with himself as to what he 
had been looking for. It was not for recognition on 
a footing of equality. Of course not! He had no 
objection to being a servant, since he needed the 
money. He objected to . . . and yet it was not quite 
tangible. He didn’t mind standing up; he didn’t mind 
the absence of a greeting; he didn’t mind any one 
tiling in itself. He minded the combination of 
assumptions, all fusing into one big assumption that 
he was in essence their inferior. Having this assump¬ 
tion so strongly in their minds, they couldn’t but 
betray it when they spoke to him. 

With his tendency to think things out, he mulled 

247 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


for the next few days over the question of inferiority. 
Why was one man inferior to another? What made 
him so? Did nature send him into the world as an 
inferior, or did the world turn him into an inferior 
after he had come into it? Did God have any part 
in it? Was it God’s will that there should be a class 
system among mankind, with class animosities, class 
warfares ? 

Of the latter he was hearing a good deal. In 
Grove Street, with its squirming litters of idealistic 
Jews and Slavs, class warfare was much talked about. 
Sometimes Tom heard the talk himself; sometimes 
Honey brought in reports of it. It was a rare day, 
especially a rare night, when some wild-eyed apostle 
was not going up or down the hill with a gospel which 
would have made old Boston, only a few hundred 
yards away, shiver in its bed on hearing it. To a 
sturdy American like Tom, and a sturdy Englishman 
like Honey, these whispered prophecies and plans were 
no more than the twitter of sparrows going to roost. 
But now that the boy was working toward man’s 
estate, and had always, within his recollection, been 
treated as an inferior, he found himself wondering 
on what principle the treatment had been based. He 
would listen more attentively when the Jew tailor next 
door to Mrs. Danker began again, as he had so often, 
to set forth his arguments in favor of dragging the 
upper classes down. He would listen when Honey 
cursed the lor of proputty. He had long been asking 
himself if in some obscure depth of Honey’s obscure 
intelligence there might not be a glimmer of a great 
big thing that was Right. 

248 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He had reached the age, which generally comes a 
little before the twenties, when the Right and Wrong 
of things puzzled and disturbed him. No longer able 
to accept Rights and Wrongs on somebody else’s 
verdict, he was without a test or a standard of his 
own. He began to wander among churches. Here, 
he had heard, all these questions had been long ago 
threshed out, and the answers reduced to formulae. 

His range was wide, Hebrew, Catholic, Protestant. 
For the most part the services bewildered him. He 
couldn’t make out why they were services, or what 
they were serving. The sermons he found plati¬ 
tudinous. They told him what in the main he knew 
already, and said little or nothing of the great funda¬ 
mental things with which his mind had been inter¬ 
mittently busy ever since the days when he used to 
talk them over with Bertie Tollivant. 

But one new interest he drew from them. The 
fragments of the gospels he heard read from altar or 
lectern or pulpit roused his curiosity. Passages were 
familiar from having learned them at the knee, so to 
speak, of Mrs. Tollivant. But they had been inco¬ 
herent, without introduction or sequence. He was 
surprised to find how little he knew of the most 
dominant character in history. 

On his way home one day he passed a shop given 
to the sale of Bibles. Deciding to buy a cheap New 
Testament, he was advised by the salesman to take a 
modern translation. That night, after he had finished 
his lessons, and Honey was asleep, he opened it. 

It opened at a page of St. Luke. Turning to the 
beginning of that gospel, he started to read it through. 

249 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He read avidly, charmed, amazed, appeased, and 
pacified. When he came to an incident bearing on 
himself he stopped. 

‘‘Now one of the Pharisees repeatedly invited Him 
to a meal at his house. So He entered the house and 
reclined at the table. And there was a woman in the 
town who was a notorious sinner. Having learnt that 
Jesus was at table in the Pharisee’s house she brought 
a flask of perfume, and standing behind, close to His 
feet, weeping, began to wet His feet with her tears; 
and with her hair she wiped the tears away again, 
while she lovingly kissed His feet, and poured the 
perfume over them. 

“Noticing this the Pharisee, His host, said to him¬ 
self : 

“ ‘This man, if He were really a prophet, would 
know who and what sort of person this is who is 
touching Him, for she is an immoral woman/ 

“In answer to his thoughts Jesus said to him: 
‘Simon, I have a word to say to you/ 

“ ‘Rabbi, say on/ he replied. 

“ ‘Do you see this woman ? I came into your house. 
You gave me no water for my feet; but she has made 
my feet wet with her tears, and then wiped the tears 
away with her hair. No kiss did you give me; but 
she, from the moment I came in, has not left off 
tenderly kissing my feet. No oil did you pour even 
on my head; but she has poured perfume on my feet. 
This is the reason why I tell you that her sins—her 
many sins—are forgiven—because she has loved 
much.” 

He shut the book with something of a bang. “So 

250 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


they used to do that sort of thing even then! . . . 
The water for the feet, and the kiss, and the oil, must 
have corresponded to our shaking hands and asking 
people to sit down. . . . And they wouldn’t show 
Him the courtesy. . . . He was their inferior. . . . 
I wonder if He minded it ... It looks as if He did 
because of the way He had it in His mind, and re¬ 
ferred to it. . . . If the woman hadn’t turned up He 
would probably not have referred to it at all. . . . 
He would have kept it to Himself . . . without re¬ 
sentment. . . . The little disdains of little people were 
too petty for Him to resent. . . . He could only be 
hurt by them . . . but on their account.’’ 

He sat late into the night, thinking, thinking. Sud¬ 
denly he thumped the table, and sprang up. “I won't 
resent it. They’re good people in their way. They 
don’t mean any unkindness. It’s only that they think 
like everybody else. Honey would call them ortho¬ 
docks. They’re courteous among themselves; they 
only don’t know how far courtesy can be made to go. 
They’re—they’re little. I’ll be big—like Him.” 


251 


XXVIII 


'TpHE resolution helped him through the summer. 

It was a pleasant summer, and yet a trying one. 
It was the first time he had ever done work of which 
the essence lay in satisfying individuals. In his mar¬ 
ket jobs the job had been the thing. Even if done at 
somebody’s order, it was judged by its success, or by 
its lack of it. His work at the inn-club brought him 
hourly into contact with men and women to whom it 
was his duty to be specially, and outwardly defer¬ 
ential. He sprang to open the door for them when 
they entered or left the car; he touched his hat to 
them whenever they gave him an order. His bearing, 
his manner of address, formed a part of his equip¬ 
ment only second to his capacity to drive. 

To this he had no objection. It only seemed odd 
that while it was his business to be courteous to others 
it was nobody’s business to be courteous to him. 
Some people were. They used toward him those 
little formalities of ‘‘Please” and “Thank you” which 
were a matter of course toward one another. They 
didn’t command; they requested. Others, on the con¬ 
trary, never requested. If their nerves or their diges¬ 
tions were not in good order, they felt at liberty to 
call him a damn fool, or if they were ladies, to find 
fault foolishly. Whatever the injustice, it was his 
part to keep himself schooled to the apologetic atti- 

252 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


tude, ready to be held in the wrong when he knew he 
was in the right. Though he had never heard of the 
English principle that you may be rude if you choose 
to your equals, but never rude to those in a position 
lower than your own, he felt its force instinctively. 
His humble place in the world’s economy entitled him 
to a courtesy which few people thought it worth their 
while to show. 

Apart from this he had nothing to complain of. 
He made good money, as the phrase went, his wages 
augmented by his tips. He took his tips without 
shame, since he did much to please his clients beyond 
what he was paid for. His relation with them being 
personal, he could see well enough that only in tips 
could they make him any recognition. With the staff 
in the house he got on very well, especially with the 
waitresses, all six of them girls working their way 
through Radcliffe, Wellesley, or Vassar. They 
chaffed him in an easy-going way, one of them calling 
him her Hercules, another her Charlemagne because 
of his height, while to a third he was her Siegfried. 
When he had no work in the evenings, and their 
dining-room duties were over, he took them for drives 
among the mountains. Writing to Honey, he said 
that what with the air, the food, the fun, and the out¬ 
door life, he was never before in such splendid shape. 

Honey was his one anxiety, though an anxiety 
which troubled him only now and then. 

“Go to it, lad,” had been his response when Tom 
had told him of Mr. Ansley’s proposition. “With 
eighty dollars a month for all summer, and yer keep 
throwed in, yer ought to save two hundred.” 

25 3 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“You’re sure you won't be lonesome, Honey?” 

Honey made a scornful exclamation. “Lord love 
yer, Kid, if I was ever goin’ to be lonesome I’d ’a 
begun before now. Lonesome! Me! That’s a good 
’un!” 

And yet on the Sunday of his departure Tom 
noticed a forced strain in Honey’s gayety. It was a 
Sunday because Tom was to drive the car up to New 
Hampshire in the afternoon to begin his first week on 
the Monday. Honey was in clamorous spirits, right 
up to an hour before the boy left. 

Then he seemed to go fiat. Pump up his humor as 
he would, it had no zest in it. When it came to the 
last handshake he grinned feebly, but couldn’t, or 
didn’t, speak. Tom drove away with a question in 
his mind as to whether or not, in Honey’s professions 
of a steeled heart, there was not some bravado. 

In driving through Nashua he saw Maisie. It had 
been agreed that she should meet him by the roadside, 
at the end of the town toward Lowell, and go on with 
him till he struck the country again. They not only 
did this, but got out at a druggist’s to spend a half 
hour over ice-cream sodas. 

Picking up the dropped threads of intercourse was 
not so easy as they had expected. It was hard for 
Tom to make himself believe that in this pretty little 
thing, all in white with pink roses in her hat, he was 
talking to his future wife. Since the fervor of his 
first love letter there had been a slight shift in his 
point of view. Without being able to locate the 
change, he felt that the new interests—the car, the inn- 
club, the variety of experience—had to some small 

254 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


degree crowded Maisie out. She was not quite so 
essential as she had seemed on the afternoon when he 
had learned of her departure. Neither was she quite 
so pretty. He thought with a pang that Honey’s pre¬ 
dictions might be coming true. Because they might 
be coming true, his pity was so great that he told her 
she was looking lovelier than ever. 

“Gee, that’s something,” Maisie accepted, com¬ 
placently. “With four brats to look after, and all 
the cooking and washing, and everything—if my 
father don’t marry again soon I’ll pass away.” She 
glanced at his chauffeur’s uniform. “You look swell.” 

He felt swell, and told her so. He told her of his 
wages, of the economies he hoped to make. 

“Gee, and you talk of goin’ to college, a fellow 
that can pull in all that money just by bein’ a shofer. 
Why, if you were to go on bein’ a shofer we could 
get married as soon as I got the family off my hands.” 

He explained to her that it was not the present, 
but the future for which he was working. A chauf¬ 
feur had only a chauffeur’s possibilities, whereas a 
man with an education . . . 

“Just my luck to get engaged to a nut,” Maisie 
commented, with forced resignation. “Gee, I got to 
laff.” 

Some half dozen times that summer, when errands 
took him to Boston, they met in the same way. Grow¬ 
ing more accustomed to their new relation to each 
other, he also grew more tender as he realized her 
limitations and domestic cares. With his first month’s 
wages in his hand, he could bring her little presents 
on each return from Boston, so helping out her never- 

255 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


failing joy in the flash of her big diamond. That at 
least she had, when every other blessing was put off 
to a vague future. 

In August, the Ansleys came flying back, driven by 
the war. It had caught them at Munich, where their 
French chauffeur, Pierre, had been interned as a 
prisoner. While taking driving lessons Tom had 
made Pierre’s acquaintance, and that he should now be 
a prisoner in Germany made the war af^eality. For 
the first few weeks it had been like a battle among 
giants in the clouds; now it came down to earth as a 
convulsion among men. 

The Ansleys had come to the inn-club because their 
own house was closed. With Guy and Hildred Tom 
found his relations changed by the fact that he was 
a chauffeur. Guy talked to him freely enough, as one 
young fellow to another, but Hildred had plainly re¬ 
ceived a hint to mark the distance between them. If 
she passed him in the grounds, or if he opened the car 
door for her, she gave him a faint, self-conscious 
smile, but never spoke to him. Mrs. Ansley freely 
used the car and him, always calling him Whitelaw. 

Philip Ansley was much preoccupied by the inter¬ 
national situation. A small, dry man of slightly 
Mongolian features, and a skin which looked like a 
parchment lampshade tinted with a little rose, he had 
made a specialty of international law as it affected the 
great corporations. New York and Washington both 
had need of him. When he couldn’t go there, those 
who wished his opinion came to him. Not a little of 
Tom’s work lay in driving him to Kfcene, the station 

256 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


for New York, to meet the important men seeking his 
advice. Thus it happened that Tom brought over 
from Keene, so late one night that he got no more 
than a dim glimpse of the visitor, the man who was 
to leave on him the most disturbing impression of the 
summer. 

Having delivered his charge at the inn-club door, 
he drove his car to the garage, climbed the stairs to 
his room, and turned into bed. Before six next morn¬ 
ing he was up for a plunge in the lake, this being the 
only hour he could count on as his own. 

It was one of those windless mornings late in sum¬ 
mer which bring the first hint of fall. The lake was 
so still that each throw of his arms was like the 
smashing of a vast metallic mirror. Only a metallic 
mirror could have had this shining dullness, faintly 
iridescent, hardly catching the rays of the newly risen 
sun. Not leaden enough for night, nor silvery enough 
for day, it kept the aloofness from man, as well as 
from Nature’s smaller blandishments, of its mighty 
companion, Monadnock. It was an awesome lake, 
beautiful, withdrawn, because it gave back the moun¬ 
tain’s awesomeness, beauty, and remoteness. 

Tom’s thrust, as he paddled the water behind him, 
broke for no more than a few seconds that which at 
once reformed itself. You would have said that the 
darting of his body, straight as a fish’s, clave the 
water as a bird cleaves the air. After he had gone 
there was hardly a ripple to tell that he had passed. 
Built to be a swimmer, loose limbed, loose muscled, 
and not too bonily spare, he breathed as a swimmer, 
deeply, gently, without spluttering or loss of his con- 

257 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


trol. In the limpid medium through which another 
might have sunk like a stone he had that sense of 
natural support which helps man to his dominion. 
Now on his right side, now on his left, he could skim 
like an arrow to its mark for the simple reason that 
he knew he could. 

He turned over on his back and floated. The quiet 
was that of a world which might never have know 
the velocity of wind, the ferocity of war. Above him 
the inviolate sky; around him the mountains nearly 
as inviolate! And everywhere the living stillness, 
vibrating, dramatic, with which Nature alone can 
quicken a dead calm! 

Turning over again, he was abandoning the crawl 
for the forearm stroke, to make his way back to the 
bathing cabins, when over the water came a long 
“Ahoy!” Nearer the shore, and a little abeam, there 
was another man swimming toward him. Tom gave 
back an “Ahoy!” and made in the direction of the 
stranger. It was perhaps another chauffeur. Even 
if it were a resident, or some resident’s guest, the 
informality of sport would put them on a level. 

The newcomer had the sun behind him; Tom had 
it on his face. His features were, therefore, the first 
to become visible. A strong voice called out, in a 
tone of astonishment: 

“Why, Tad! What are you doing up here in New 
Hampshire?” 

Tom laughed. “Tad—nothing! I’m Tom!” 

The other came nearer. “Tom, are you? Excuse 
me! Took you for my son.” 

258 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


‘‘Sorry Pm not,” Tom laughed again. “Somebody 
else’s.” 

Coming abreast, they headed toward shore. Each 
face was turned toward the other. Adopting his com¬ 
panion’s stroke, Tom adjusted himself to his pace. 
Though conversation was not easy, the one found it 
possible to ask questions, the other to answer them. 

“Look like my son. What’s your name?” 

“Whitelaw.” 

A light came into the eyes, and went out again. 
“Where do you live?” 

“Boston.” 

“Lived there all your life?” 

“Only for the last three years or so.” 

“Where’d you live before that?” 

“New York some of the time.” 

“Where were you born?” 

“The Bronx.” 

“What was your father’s name?” 

“Theodore Whitelaw.” 

There was again that spark in the eyes, flashing 
and then dying out. “How did he get that name?” 

“Don’t know. Just a name. Suppose his mother 
gave it to him.” 

“Lots of Theodore Whitelaws. Have come across 
two or three. Like the Colin Campbells and Howard 
Smiths you run into everywhere. What did your 
father do?” 

“Never heard. Died when I was a kid.” Tom 
felt entitled to ask a question on his own side. “What 
do you want to know for?” 

The other seemed on his guard. 7 ‘Oh, nothing! 

259 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Was just—was just struck by the resemblance to—to 
my boy.” 

The swerve which took them away from each 
other was as slight as that which a ship gets from her 
rudder. Tom continued to play round in the water 
till he saw the older man reach the bathing cabins, 
dress, and go away. 

That afternoon he was told to drive back to Keene 
both Mr. Ansley and the guest whom he, Tom, had 
brought over on the previous evening. As the latter 
came out to enter the car it was easy to recognize 
the swimmer of the morning. 

Tom held the door open, his hand to his cap. The 
gentleman gave him a swift, keen look. 

“Oh, so this is what you do!” 

“Yes, sir; this is what I do. Mr. Ansley got me 
the job.” 

“Young fellow whom Guy has befriended,” Mr. 
Ansley explained, as he took his place beside his 
friend. 

But in the Pullman, when Tom had carried in the 
gentleman’s valise, there was another minute in which 
they were alone. The car was nearly empty; there 
were still some five minutes before the departure of 
the train. While the colored porter took the suitcase 
the traveler turned to Tom. He was a tall man, 
straight and flexible like Tom himself, but a little 
heavier. 

“How old are you?” 

“Seventeen, sir.” 

A shadow flew across the face. “Tad is seventeen, 
*oo. That settles any—” Without stating what was 

260 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


settled by this coincidence of ages, he went on with 
his quick, peremptory questions. “What do you do 
when you leave here?” 

“I go back for my last year in the Latin School 
in Boston.” 

“And then ?” 

“I go to Harvard.” 

“Putting yourself through?” 

“Only partly, sir.” 

“Friends ?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The questions ceased. The face, which even a boy 
like Tom could see to be that of a strong man who 
must have suffered terribly, grew pensive. When the 
eyes were bent toward the floor Tom took note of a 
pair of bushy, outstanding, horizontal eyebrows, 
oddly like his own. 

The reverie ended abruptly. Some thought seemed 
to be dismissed. It seemed to be dismissed with both 
decision and relief. But the man held out his hand. 

“Good-by.” 

“Good-by, sir.” 

It was not the questions, nor the interest, it was 
the last little act of farewell that gave Tom a glowing 
feeling in the heart as he went back to his car and 
Mr. Ansley. 


261 


J 


XXIX 


I T was late that evening before Tom found an 
opportunity to ask Miss Padley, who kept what 
the inn-club knew as the office, the name of the guest 
who had questioned him so closely. Miss Padley was 
a red-haired, freckled girl, putting herself through 
Radcliffe. Unused to clerical work, she was tired. 
When Tom put his query she gazed up at him 
vacantly, before she could collect her wits. 

“The name of the gentleman who left this after¬ 
noon ?” She called to Ella, one of the waitresses, in 
her second year at Wellesley. “What was it, Ella? 
I forget. ” 

As the house was closing for the night some in¬ 
formality was possible. Ella sauntered up. 

“What was what?” 

Tom's question was repeated. 

“Oh, that was the great Henry T. Whitelaw. Big 
banker. Partner in Meek and Brokenshire’s. They 
say that he and a few other bankers could stop the 
war if they liked, by holding back the cash. Don’t 
believe it. War’s too big. And, say! He was the 
father of that Whitelaw baby there used to be all the 
talk about.” 

Miss Padley looked up, her cheek resting on her 
hand. “You don’t say! Gee, I wish I’d known that. 
I’d ’a looked at him a little closer.” She turned her 

262 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


tired greenish eyes toward Tom. “Your name is 
Whitelaw, too, isn’t it ?” 

He grinned nervously. “My name is Whitelaw, 
too, only, like the lady’s maid whose name was 
Shakespeare but was no relation to the play-actor of 
that name, I don't belong to the banking branch of 
the family.” 

Ella exclaimed, as one who makes a discovery. 
“But, Siegfried, you look as if you did. Doesn’t he, 
Blanche? Look at his eyebrows. They’re just like 
the banker man’s.” 

“Oh, I’ve looked at them often enough,” Miss 
Padley returned, wearily. “Got his mustaches stuck 
on in the wrong place. I’m off.” 

Yawning, she shut her ledger, closed an open 
drawer, and rose. But Ella, a dark little thing, kept 
her snappy black eyes on Tom. 

“You do look like him, Siegfried. I’d put in a 
claim if I were you. I’m single, you know, and I’ve 
always admired you. Think of the romance it would 
make if the Whitelaw baby took home as his bride a 
poor but honest working girl!” 

Dodging Ella's chaff, Tom escaped to the garage. 
It was queer how the Whitelaw baby haunted him. 
Honey!—Ella!—and the Whitelaw baby’s own 
father! 

But the haunting stopped. Neither Ella nor Miss 
Padley took it as more than a passing pleasantry, for¬ 
gotten with the morning. The tall man who had 
asked him questions never came back again. The 
rest of the summer went by with but one little incident 
to remain in his memory. 

263 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was a very little incident. Walking one day in 
the road that ran round the lake he came face to face 
with Hildred Ansley. She had grown since the pre¬ 
vious winter, a little in height, and more in an inde¬ 
finable development. She was fifteen now; but, 
always older than her age, she was more like seven¬ 
teen or eighteen. Her formal manner, her decided 
mind, her “grown-up” choice of words, made her 
already something of that finished entity for which we 
have only the word lady. Ella had said of her that at 
twenty she would look like forty, and at forty continue 
to look like twenty. Tom thought that this might be 
true—an early fullness of womanhood, but a long one. 

She had been playing tennis, and swung her racket 
as she came along. He was sorry for this direct 
encounter, since she might find it awkward; but when 
she waved her racket to him, it was clear that she did 
not. She felt perhaps the more independent, released 
from her mother’s supervision and the inn. Her 
smile, something in her way of pausing in the road, an 
ease of manner beyond analysis, put them both on the 
plane on which their acquaintance had begun. The 
slanting yellowish-brown eyes together with the faint 
glimmer of a smile heightened that air of mystery 
which had always made her different from other girls. 

“How have you been getting along?” 

He said he had been doing very well. 

“How have you liked the job?” 

“Fine! Everybody’s been nice to me—” 

“Everybody likes you. All the same, I hope, if 
they ask you to come back next year, that—you 
won’t.” 


264 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Why not?” 

“Oh, just—because!” 

Slipping away, she left him with the summer’s 
second memory. She hoped he wouldn’t take the 
place again— because! Because—what? Could she 
have meant what he thought she must have meant? 
Was it possible that she didn’t like to see him in a situ¬ 
ation something like a servant’s? Though he never 
again, during all the rest of the summer, had so much 
speech with her alone, it gave him a hint to turn over 
in his mind. 

Driving the car back to Boston, after the inn-club 
had closed, he saw Maisie for the last time that year. 
Uncertain of his hours, he had been unable to arrange 
to have her meet him, and so looked her up in her 
home. A small wooden house, once stained a dark 
red, weather-worn now to a reddish-dun, it stood on 
the outskirts of the town. In a weedy back-yard, 
redeemed from ugliness by the flaming of a maple 
tree, Maisie was pinning newly washed clothes to a 
clothes-line stretched between the back door and a 
post. Two children, a boy of six and a girl of eight, 
were tumbling about with a pup. At sound of the 
stopping of the car in the roadway in front of the 
house Maisie turned, a clothes-pin held lengthwise in 
her mouth. Even with her sleeves rolled up and her 
hair in wisps, she couldn’t be anything but pretty. 

She came and sat beside him in the car, the children 
and the pup staring up at them in wonder. 

“Gee, I wish he’d get married; but I daresay he 
won’t for ever so long. Married to the* bottle, that’s 
what he is. It was six years after my mother died 

265 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


before he took on the last one. That’s what makes 
me so much older than the four kids. All the same 
I’d beat it if you’d take a shofer’s job and settle down. 
I’m not bound to stay here and make myself a slave.” 

It was the burden of all Maisie's reasoning, and he 
had to admit its justice. He was asking her to wait a 
long four years before he could give her a home. It 
would have been more preposterous than it was if 
among poor people, among poor young people espe¬ 
cially, a long courtship, with marriage as a vague 
fulfillment, was not general. Any such man as she 
was likely to get would have to toil and save, and save 
and toil, before he could pay for the few sticks of 
furniture they would need to set up housekeeping. 
Never having thought of anything else, she was the 
more patient now; but patient with a strain of rebel¬ 
lion against Tom’s whim for education. 

She cried when he left her; he almost cried him¬ 
self, from a sense of his impotence to take her at once 
from a life of drudgery. The degree to which he 
loved her seemed to be secondary now to her helpless 
need of him. True, he could get a job as chauffeur 
and make a hundred dollars a month to begin with. 
To Maisie that would be riches; but a hundred and 
fifty a month would then become his lifelong limit 
and ambition. Even to save Maisie now he couldn’t 
bring himself to sacrifice not merely his future but her 
own. Once he was “through college,” it seemed to 
him that the treasures of the world would lie open. 

Arrived in Grove Street, he found one new condi¬ 
tion which made his return easier. Honey, who, for 
the sake of economy, had occupied a hall-bedroom 

266 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


through the summer, had reserved another, on the 
door above, for Tom. The relief from the sharing of 
one big room amounted to a sense of luxury. 

On the other hand, Honey, for the first time since 
Tom had known him, was moody and tired. He was 
not ill; he was only less cast-iron than he used to be. 
He found it harder to go to work in the morning; he 
was more spent when he came back at night, as if 
some inner impulse of virility was wearing itself out. 
The war worried him. The fact that old England had 
met a foe whom she couldn’t walk over at once dis¬ 
turbed his ideas as to the way in which the founda¬ 
tions of the world had been laid. 

“Anything can happen now, kid,” he declared, in 
discussing the English retreat from Mons. “Haven’t 
felt so bad since the bloody cop give me the whack 
with his club what put out me eye. If Englishmen 
has to turn tail before Germans, well, what next?” 

But to Tom’s suggestions that he should go to 
Canada and enlist in the British army Honey was as 
stone. “You're too young. Y’ain’t got yer growth. 
I don’t care what no one says. War is for men. Yer 
first business, and yer last business, and yer only 
business, is yer eddication.” 

It must be admitted that Tom agreed with him. 
He had no longing to go to war. Europe was far 
away while life was near. Education, Maisie, the 
future, had the first claim on him. It began to occur 
to him that even Honey had a claim on him, now that 
he was not so vigorous as he used to be. 

There were other interests to make war remote. 
On returning to town, after a summer amid the spa- 

267 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


ciousness, beauty, and comfort which the few could 
give themselves, he was oppressed by the privations of 
the many. Never before had he thought of them. He 
had taken Grove Street for granted. He had taken it 
for granted that life was hard and crowded and bitter 
and cold and ugly, and couldn’t be anything else. Now 
he had seen for himself that it could be easy and 
beautiful and healthy. True, he had always known 
that there were rich people as well as poor people; but 
never before had he been close enough to the rich to 
see their luxuries in detail. The contrasts in the 
human scheme of things having thus come home to 
him he was moved to a distressed wondering. 

What brought these differences about? If all the 
rich were industrious and good, while all the poor were 
idle and extravagant, he could have understood it bet¬ 
ter. But it wasn’t so. The rich were often idle and 
extravagant, and didn’t suffer. The poor were nearly 
always industrious—they couldn't be anything else— 
and were as good as they had leisure to be, but suf¬ 
fered from something all the time. How could this 
injustice be endured? What was to be done about it? 
Wasn’t it everybody’s duty to try to right such a 
wrong? 

Because he had only now'become aware of it he 
supposed that nobody but the Slav and Jewish agi¬ 
tators had been aware of it before. Louisburg Square, 
and all that element in the world which Louisburg 
Square represented, could never have thought of it. 
If it had, it couldn’t have slept at night in its bed. 
That it should lie snug and soft and warm while all 
the rest of the world—at least a good three-fourths— 

268 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


lay cold and hard and hungry, must be out of the 
question. If the rich people only knew! It was 
strange that someone hadn’t told them. What were 
the newspapers and the governments and the churches 
doing that they weren’t ringing with protests against 
this fundamental evil? 

More than ever Honey's rebellion against the lor of 
proputty seemed to him based on some principle he 
couldn’t trace. Honey was doubtless all wrong; and 
yet the other thing was just as wrong as Honey. He 
started him talking on the subject as they strolled to 
their dinner that evening. 

“Seems as if this ’ere old human race didn’t have 
no spunk. Yer can put anything over on them, and 
they’ll ’ardly lift a kick. It's like as if they was 
hypnertized. Them as has got everything is hypner- 
tized into thinkin' they’ve a right to it; and them as 
have got nothink ’ll let theirselves believe as nothink 
is all that belongs to ’em. Comes o’ most o’ the world 
bein’ orthodocks. Lord love yer, I’d rather think for 
meself if it landed me ten months out’n every twelve 
in jail, than have two thousand a year and yet be an 
old tabby-orthodock what never had a mind.” 

They were seated at the table in Mrs. Turtle’s base¬ 
ment dining-room, when, looking up and down the 
double row of guests, Honey whispered, “Tabby- 
orthodocks—all of ’em.” 

At his sixteen or eighteen fellow-mealers Tom 
looked with a new vision. With the aid of Honey’s 
epithet he could class them. Mostly men, they sat 
bowed, silent, futile, gulping down their coarse food 
with no pretense at softening the animal processes of 

269 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


eating. These, too, he had hitherto taken for granted. 
In all the months they had ‘‘mealed ' at Mrs. Turtle’s 
—in the years they had “mealed’’ at similar establish¬ 
ments in Grove Street—he had looked on them, and 
on others of their kind, as the norm of humanity. 
Now he saw something wrong in them, without know¬ 
ing what it was. 

“What’s the matter with them?’’ he asked of 
Honey, as they went back across Grove Street to 
Mrs. Danker’s. 

Honey’s reply was standardized. “Bein’ ortho¬ 
docks. Not thinkin’ for theirselves. Not usin’ the 
mind as Gord give ’em. Believin’ what other blokes 
told ’em, and stoppin’ at that. I say, Kiddy! Don’t 
yer never go for to forget that yer’ll get farther in 
the world by bein’ wrong the way yer thinks yer self 
than by bein’ right the way some other feller tells 
yer.” 

Having reached their own house they stood, each 
with a foot on the doorstep, while Tom smoked a 
cigarette and Honey enlarged on his philosophy. 

“I don't believe as Gord put us into this world to 
be right not ’arf so much as what He done it so as 
we'd find out for ourselves what’s right and what’s 
wrong. One right thing as yer’ve found out for yer- 
self ’ll make yer more of a man than fifty as yer’ve 
took on trust. Look at ’em in there!’’ He nodded 
backward toward Mrs. Turtle’s. “They’ve all took 
everythink on trust, and see what it’s made of ’em. 
Whoever says, T’m an orthodock, and I’m goin’ to 
live and die an orthodock,’ is like the guy in the Bible 
as was bound ’and and foot with grave-clothes. My 

270 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


genius was always for thinkin’ things out for meself; 
and look at me to-day 1” 

It was another discovery to Tom that Honey felt 
proud and happy in his accomplishment. Honey to 
Tom was a machine for doing heavy work. He was 
a drudge, and a dray-horse. He was shut out from 
the higher, the more spiritual activities. But here 
was Honey himself content, and in a measure exultant. 

“Been wrong in a lot o' things I have; but I’ve 
found it out for meself. I ain’t sorry for what I’ve 
did. It's learned me. There ain't a old jug I’ve been 
in, in England or the State o’ New York, that didn’t 
learn me somethink. I see now that I was wrong. 
But I see, too, that them as tried and sentenced me 
wasn’t right. When they repents of the sins what 
their lors and gover'ments and churches has commit¬ 
ted against this old world, I’ll repent o’ the sins I’ve 
committed against them.’’ 

This ability to stand alone, mentally at least, against 
all religion and society, was, as Tom saw it, the secret 
of Honey’s independence. He might have been a 
rogue, a burglar, a convict; and yet he was a man, as 
the orthodocks at Mrs. Turtle’s were not, and never 
had been, men. Having allowed themselves to be 
hammered into subjection by what Honey called lors, 
gover'ments, and churches, in subjection they had 
been trapped, and never could get out again. There 
was something about Honey that was strong and free. 


271 


XXX 


T O make himself strong and free was Tom White- 
law’s ruling motive through the winter which 
preceded his going to Harvard. He must be a man, 
not merely in physical vigor, but in mental independ¬ 
ence. Convinced that he was in what he called a 
rotten world, a world of rotten customs built on a 
rotten foundation, he saw it as a task to learn to pick 
his way amid the rottenness. To rebel, but keep his 
rebellion as steam with which to drive his engine, not 
as something to let off in futile raging against estab¬ 
lished convictions, was a hint of Honey’s by which 
he profited. 

“It don’t do yer no good to kick so as they can 
ketch and jump on you. I’ve tried that. And it ain't 
no good to jaw. Tried that too. If the uninherited 
was anythink but a bunch o’ simps you might be able 
to rouse ’em. But they ain’t. All yer can do is to 
shut yer mouth and live. Yer’ll live harder and surer 
with yer mouth shut. Yer’ll live truer too, just as 
yer’ll shoot straighter when yer ain’t talkin’ and 
fidgitin’ about. Don’t believe what no judge or 
gov’nor or bishop says to yer just because he says it; 
but don’t let ’em know as yer don’t believe it, because 
they’ll hoodoo you with their whim-whams. Awful 
glad they’ll be, both Church and State, to ruin the 
man what don’t believe the way they tell him to.” 

272 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


On the eve of manhood Tom thought more highly 
of Honey than he had when a few years younger. 
Having judged him drugged by work, he found that 
he had ideas of his own, however mistaken they 
might be. However mistaken they might be, they had 
at least produced one guiding principle: to keep your 
mouth shut and live! Taking his notes about life, as 
he did through the following winter, he made them 
according to this counsel. 

The outstanding feature of the season was the 
development of something like a real friendship with 
Guy Ansley. Hitherto the two young men had backed 
and filled; but in proportion as Tom grew more sure 
of himself the weaker fellow clung to him. He clung 
in his own way; but he clung. He was the patron. 
Tom was the fine young chap he had taken a fancy to 
and was helping along. 

“Fm awful democratic that way. Whole lot of 
fellows ’ll think they’ve just got to go with their own 
gang. Doolittle and Pray’s is full of that sort of 
bunk. The Doolittle and Pray spirit they call it. I 
call it fluff. If I like a fellow I stick by him, no matter 
what he is. I’d just as soon go round with you as 
with the stylishest fellow on the Back Bay. Social 
position don’t mean anything to me. Of course I 
know it’s very nice to have it; but if a fellow hasn't 
got it, why, I don’t care, not so long as he’s a sport.” 

“Keep your mouth shut and live,” Tom reminded 
himself. He liked Guy Ansley well enough. He was 
at least a fellow of his own age, with whom he could 
be franker than had been possible with Maisie, and 
who would understand him in ways in which Honey 

273 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


never could. With the difference made by ten years 
in his point of view, he discussed with Guy the same 
sort of subjects, sex, religion, profession, vices, poli¬ 
tics, that he had talked over with Bertie Tollivant. 
Merely to hear their own voices on these themes eased 
the adolescent turmoil in their brains. 

Hildred Ansley, having entered Miss Winslow’s 
school as a boarder, was immured as in a convent. 
Her absence made it the easier for Tom to run in and 
out of the Ansley house on the missions, secret and 
important, which boys create among themselves. Guy 
had a set of maps by which you could follow the ebb 
and flow on the battle front. Guy had a wireless 
installation with which you could listen in on messages 
not meant for you. Guy had skis, and bought another 
pair for Tom so that they could tramp together on the 
Fenway. Guy had a runabout which Tom taught him 
to drive. Guy had tickets for any play or concert he 
chose to attend, and invited Tom to go along with him. 

Doubtful at first, Mrs. Ansley came round to view 
the acquaintance almost without misgiving. 

“I think you’re a steady boy, aren’t you?” she asked 
of Tom one day, when finding him alone. 

Tom smiled. “I don’t get much chance, ma’am, to 
be anything else.” 

Lacking a sense of humor, Mrs. Ansley was literal. 

“I don’t like you to say that. It sounds as if when 
you do get the chance—But perhaps you’ll know bet¬ 
ter by that time. It’s something I hope Guy will help 
you to see in return for all the—well, the physical 
protection you give him.” 

“Oh, but, ma’am, I—” 


274 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“That’ll do. I know my boy is brave. But I know 
too that he’s not very strong, and to have a great 
fellow like you, used to roughing it—It reminds me 
of the big Cossack who always goes round with the 
little Tsarevitch. Not that Guy is as young as that, 
but he’s been tenderly brought up.’’ 

“Oh, mother, give us a rest!” Guy had rushed 
into his flowered room from whatever errand had 
taken him away. “If I have been tenderly brought 
up, I’m as tough to-day as any mucker down where 
Tom lives.” 

“The dear boy!” 

She smiled at Tom, as at one who like herself under¬ 
stood this extravagance, moving away with the stately 
lilt that made her skirts flounce up and down. 

“It’s Hildred that’s sicking the old lady on to her 
little song and dance in your favor,” Guy declared, 
when they had the room to themselves again. “Hil¬ 
dred likes you. Always has. She’s democratic, too, 
just like me. Once let a fellow be a sport and Hildred 
wouldn’t care what he was socially.” 

“Keep your mouth shut and live,” became Tom’s 
daily self-adjuration. That Guy sincerely liked him 
he was sure, and this in itself meant much to him. 
The patronage could be smiled away. If he and his 
mother failed in tact they gave him much in compen¬ 
sation. In their house he was getting accustomed to 
certain small usages which at first had overawed him. 
Space didn’t dwarf him any more, nor beauty strike 
him spellbound. He was so courteous to Pilcher that 
Pilcher, returning deference for deference, had once 
or twice called him “sir.” The plays to which Guy 

275 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


took him were a long step in his education; the music 
they heard together released a whole new range in his 
emotions. 

He discovered that Guy was what is commonly 
called musical. He played the piano not badly; he 
knew something of the classics, of the great romanti¬ 
cists, of the moderns. Back of the library was a music 
room, and when other occupations palled, there Guy 
would play and explain, while Tom sat listening and 
enjoying. Guy liked explaining; it showed his supe¬ 
riority. Tom liked to learn. To know the difference 
between Mozart and Beethoven was a stage in prog¬ 
ress. To have the cabalistic names of Wagner and 
Debussy, which he had often seen in newspapers, 
spring to significance was an initiation into mysteries. 

So with work, with sports, with amusements, the 
winter sped by, bringing a sense of an expanding life. 
He had one main care: Maisie was more unhappy. 
Her appeals to him to throw up college, to become a 
chauffeur and marry her, increased in urgency. 

He had come to the point of seeing that his engage¬ 
ment to Maisie was a bit of folly. If Honey were to 
learn of it, or the Ansleys . . . but he hoped to keep 
it secret till he won a position in which he could be 
free of censure. Once with an income to support a 
wife, his mistakes and sufferings would be his own 
business. In proportion as life opened up it was easy 
for him to face trouble cheerfully. 

May had come round, and by keeping his birthday 
on the fifth of March, he was now more than eighteen. 
On a Saturday morning when there was no school to 
attend he and Guy had lingered on the roof of the 

276 


1 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Ansley house after their task with the wireless appa¬ 
ratus was over. Looking across the river toward 
Cambridge, where one big tower marked the site of 
Harvard, they were speculating on the new step in 
manhood they would take in the following October. 

Pilcher’s old head appeared through the skylight to 
inform Mr. Guy that lunch was waiting. Madam 
wished him to come down. 

“Where is she?” 

“She’s in the dining room, Mr. Guy.” 

“Get along, Tom. I’ll be ready with the runabout 
at two. You won’t be late, will you?” 

Tom said he would not be late, following Pilcher 
through the skylight and down the several flights of 
stairs. He was eager to slip out the front door with¬ 
out encountering Mrs. Ansley. Mrs. Ansley was 
eager not to encounter him. With lunch on the table, 
it would be awkward not to ask him to sit down; and 
to ask him to sit down would be out of the question. 
It would be just like Guy . . . 

And then Guy did what was just like him. 
“Mother,” he called out, puffing down the last of the 
staircases, “why can’t Tom have lunch with us? He’s 
got to be back here at two anyway. He’s coming out 
with me in the runabout.” 

Tom was doing his best to turn the knob of the 
front door. “Couldn’t, Guy,” he whispered back, 
shaking his head violently. “Got to beat it.” 

In reality he was running away. To sit at the table, 
with Mrs. Ansley, and be served by Pilcher, required 
a knowledge of etiquette he did not possess. 

277 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Mother, grab him,’’ Guy insisted. “He might as 
well stay, mightn’t he?” 

Reluctantly Mrs. Ansley appeared in the doorway. 
In so far as she could ever be vexed with Guy, she was 
vexed. “If Whitelaw’s got to go, dear—” 

“He hasn't got to go, have you, Tom? He don’t 
have a home to toe the line at. He just picks up his 
grub wherever he can get it.” 

To such an appeal it was impossible to be wholly 
deaf. “Oh, then, if Whitelaw chooses to stay with 
us—” 

“Oh, I couldn’t, ma’am,” Tom cried, hurriedly. 
“Eve got to—” 

But Guy, who had now reached the floor of the 
hall, caught him by the arm. “Oh, come along in. 
It can’t hurt us. The old lady's just as democratic as 
Hildred and me.” 

Mrs. Ansley was overborne; she couldn’t help her¬ 
self. Tom also was overborne, finding it easier to 
yield than to rebel. There being but three places laid 
at the table, one of which was reserved for Mr. Ansley 
in case he came home for luncheon, Pilcher set a 
fourth. 

“Will you sit there, Whitelaw?” 

“Oh, mother, call him Tom. He isn’t a chauffeur, 
not when he’s in town here.” 

If anyone but Guy had put her in this situation 
Mrs. Ansley would have deemed it due to herself to 
sail from the room. As it was, she endeavored to 
humor the boy, to keep Tom in his place, and to 
rescue the dignity which had never yet sat down at 
table with a servant. 


278 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’m sure there’s no harm in being a chauffeur. 
I’m the last person in the world to say so, dependent 
on chauffeurs as I am. Besides, we knew, of course, 
that some of the young people helping us at the inn- 
club were studying in colleges, and that they didn’t 
mean to stay in those positions permanently.” She 
grew arch. “But I’m not democratic, Mr. Whitelaw. 
Guy knows I’m not. It’s his way of teasing me. 
He’s perfectly aware that I consider democracy a 
failure. There never was a greater fallacy than that 
all men were born free and equal. As to freedom I’m 
indifferent; but I’ve never pretended that any Tom, 
Dick, or Harry was my equal, and I never shall.” 

“You don’t mean this Tom, do you, old lady?” 

“Now, Guy! Isn’t he a tease, Mr. Whitelaw? 
But I do believe in equality of opportunity. That 
seems to me one of the glories of our country. So 
many of our great men have come from the very 
humblest origin. And if we can do anything to help 
them along—with Guy that’s an obsession. If it’s a 
fault I say it’s a good fault. Better to err on that 
side, I always think, than to see some one achieve the 
big thing, and know that you had no share in it when 
you might have had. That’s shepherd’s pie, Mr. 
Whitelaw. We have very simple lunches because Mr. 
Ansley doesn’t always come home, and in any case 
his meal is his dinner.” 

She rambled on because Guy was too busy with 
his food to help her, and Tom too terrified. He was 
sorry not merely for himself, but for her. Compelled 
to admit him to breaking bread with her, she must 
feel as if he had been forced on her in her dressing 

279 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


room. As a matter of fact, he admired the way in 
which she was carrying it off. Long ago, having 
divined her as taking her inherited position in Boston 
as a kind of sanctifying aura, shrinking from un¬ 
authorized approach like a sensitive plant from a 
touch, she reminded him of an anecdote he had some¬ 
where read of Queen Victoria. The Queen was hold¬ 
ing a council. Present at it among others was a 
statesman sitting for the first time as a member of 
the cabinet. Obliged at a given moment to carry a 
paper from one side of the table to the other, this 
gentleman passed back of the Queen’s chair, acci- ♦ 
dentally grazing it with his hand. The Queen shud¬ 
dered and shrank away. The touching merely of the 
chair was a violation of majesty. “He won’t do,” 
she whispered to the prime minister. He didn't do. 
He passed not only into political but into social 
oblivion. Tom recalled the incident as he tried to 
choke down his shepherd's pie. He was the unhappy 
statesman. He wouldn’t do. Amiable as Mrs. 
Ansley tried to make herself, he knew how she was 
suffering. He was suffering himself. 

And^ in on his suffering, to make it worse, bustled 
Mr. Ansley. Throwing his hat and gloves on a settle 
in the hall, he shot into the dining room at once. He 
was a man who shot, sharply, directly, rather than 
one who walked. Tom stood up. 

“Sorry I’m so late, Sunshine—” His eye fell on 
Tom. “Oh, how-d’ye-do? Seen you before, haven’t 
I ? Oh! Oh!” The exclamations were of surprise 
and a little pain. “Why, you’re the young fellow who 
ran the station car for us.” 

280 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Mrs. Ansley intervened as one who pacifies. “He’s 
going out with Guy at two o’clock, to help him run 
the runabout.” 

“Help me run it! Why, mother, you talk as if—” 

“And Guy couldn’t let him go off without anything 
to eat.” 

“Quite so! quite so!” Mr. Ansley agreed. “Glad 
to see you. Sit down.” He helped himself to the 
shepherd’s pie which Pilcher passed again. “Let me 
see! What was it your name was ?” 

Tom sat down again. “Whitelaw, sir/ * 

“Oh, yes; so it was. You’re the same Whitelaw 
who’s been running about this winter and spring with 
Guy. Quite so! quite so! Oh, and by the way, Sun¬ 
shine, speaking of Whitelaw, Henry looked in on me 
this morning. Ran over from New York about some 
business cropped up since the sinking of the Lusi¬ 
tania?' 

“How is he?” 

“Seems rather worried. Lost several intimate 
friends on the ship, besides which the old question 
seems to be popping up again.” 

Mrs. Ansley sighed. “Oh, dear! I hope they’ll 
not be dragged through all that with another of their 
foolish clues. I thought it was over.” 

“It’s over for Eleonora. But you'know how Henry 
feels about it. Got it on the brain. Pity, I call it, 
after—how many years is it ?” 

Mrs. Ansley computed. “It was while we were on 
our honeymoon. Don’t you remember? We read it 
in the paper at Montreal, after we'd come from 

281 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Niagara Falls. That was the fifteenth of May, and 
Harry had been stolen on the tenth.” 

Tom felt a queer sick sinking of the heart. The 
tenth of May was the last of the three dates his 
mother had fixed as his birthday. She had told him, 
too, that the day when he was born was one on which 
the nursemaids were in the Park, and the lilacs had 
been in bloom. Why this specification? If, as she 
had informed him at other times, he was born in the 
Bronx, where Gracie also had been born, why the 
reference to the Park and nursemaids, five miles 
away? He listened avidly. 

“How old would that make him if he were living 
now?” 

Again Mrs. Ansley reckoned. “Something over 
nineteen. I’ve forgotten just how many months he 
was when he disappeared.” 

Tom was reassured. He was only eighteen; he 
was positive of that. He couldn’t have been nineteen 
without ever suspecting it. Mr. Ansley continued. 

“Seems to me a great mistake to bring him back 
now, even if they found him. A lumbering fellow of 
nineteen, practically a man, with probably the lowest 
associations.” 

“That’s what Onora feels. She’s told me so. She 
couldn't go through it. Even if he isn’t dead in fact 
he's dead to them.” 

“Henry feels that, of course. He doesn’t deny it. 
He doesn’t want him back—not now. At the same 
time when any new will o’ the wisp starts up he can't 
help feeling—” 


282 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tom was back in his little hall bedroom, after the 
run in the car with Guy, before he had time to think 
these scraps of conversation over. The details for 
which he had to render an account were, first, his 
sickening sense of dread on learning that the White- 
law baby had been stolen on the tenth of May, and, 
then, his relief that the child, if now alive, would be 
nineteen years of age. These sensations or emotions, 
whatever they might be called, had been independent 
of his will. What did they portend? Why was he 
frightened in the one case, and in the other comforted? 

He didn’t know. That he didn’t know was the only 
decision he could reach. Were the impossible ever to 
come true, were the parents of the Whitelaw baby 
ever, no matter how unwillingly, to claim him as their 
son, the advantages to him would be obvious. Why 
then did he hate the idea? What was it in him that 
cried out, and pleaded not to be forsaken? 

He didn’t know. 


283 


XXXI 


UCKILY the questions raised that day died out 
*■— 4 like a false alarm. With no further mention of 
the Whitelaw baby, he graduated from the Latin 
School, passed his exams at Harvard, and spent the 
summer as second in command of a boys’ camp in a 
part of New Hampshire remote from the inn-club and 
the Ansleys. October found him a freshman. The 
new life was beginning. 

He had slept his first night in his bedroom in Gore 
Hall, where his quarters had been appointed. He had 
met the three fellow-freshmen with whom he was to 
share a sitting room. The sitting room was on the 
ground floor in a corner, looking out on the Embank¬ 
ment and the Charles. Never having had, since he 
left the Quidmores, a place in which to work better 
than the narrow squalid room at the end of a narrow 
squalid hall, his joy in this new decency of living was 
naive to the point of childishness. He spent in that 
retreat, during the first twenty-four hours, every 
minute not occupied with duties. Because he was glad 
of the task, his colleagues had left to him as much of 
the job of arranging the furniture as he would 
assume. 

On the second day of his residence he was on his 
knees, behind his desk, pulling at a rug that had been 
wrinkled up. His zeal could bear nothing not neat, 
straight, adjusted. The desk was heavy, the rug 

284 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


stubborn. When a rap sounded on the door he called 
out, “Come in !” looking up above the edge of the 
desk only when the door had been opened and closed. 

A lady, dignified, a little portly, was stepping into 
the room, with the brisk air of one who had a right 
there. As she had been motoring, she was wreathed in 
a dark green veil, which partially hid her features. 
Peeling off a gauntlet, she glanced round the room, 
after a first glance at Tom. 

“I’m sorry to be late, Tad. That stupid Patterson 
lost his way. He’s a very good driver, but he’s no 
sense of direction. Why, where’s the picture? You 
said you had had it hung.” 

Her tone was «risp and staccato. In her breath 
there was the syncopated halt which he afterward came 
to associate with the actress, Mrs. Fiske. She might 
be nervous; or she might suffer from the heart. 

For the first few seconds he was too agitated to 
know exactly what to do. He had been looked at and 
called Tad again, this time probably by Tad’s mother. 
He rose to his height of six feet two. The lady 
started back. 

“Why, what have you been doing to yourself? 
What are you standing on? What makes you so 
tall?” 

“I’m afraid there’s some mistake, ma’am.” 

She broke in with a kind of petulance. “Oh, Tad, 
no nonsense ! I’m tired. I’m not in the mood for it.” 

Both gauntlets peeled off, she flung them on the 
desk. With a motion as rapid as her speech she 
stepped toward a window and looked out over the 
Embankment. 


285 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“It’s going to be noisy and dusty for you here. The 
stream of cars is incessant/’ 

Being now beyond the desk, she caught the fullness 
of his stature. Her left hand went up with a startled 
movement. She gave a little gasp. 

“Oh! You frightened me. You’re not standing 
on anything.” 

“No, ma’am, I . . .” 

“I asked for Mr. Whitelaw’s room. They told me 
to come to number twenty-eight.” 

Making her way out, she kept looking back at him 
in terror. When he hurried to open the door for her, 
she waved him away. Everything she did and said 
was rapid, staccato, and peremptory. 

“You’ve forgotten your gloves, ma’am.” 

He reached them with a stretch of his arm. Tak¬ 
ing them from him, she still kept her eyes on his face. 

“No! You don’t look like him. I thought you did. 
I was wrong. It’s only the—the eyes—and the eye¬ 
brows.” 

She was gone. He closed the door upon her. 
Dropping into an armchair by the window, he stared 
out on a wide low landscape, with a double procession 
of motor cars in the foreground, and a river in the 
middle distance. 

So this was the woman who had lived through the 
agony of a stolen child! He tried to recall what 
Honey had told him of the tragedy. He remembered 
the house which five years earlier Honey had taken 
him to see; he remembered the dell with the benches 
and the lilacs. This woman's child had been wheeled 
out there one morning—and had vanished. She had 

286 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


had to bear being told of the fact. She had gone 
through the minutes when the mind couldn’t credit it. 
She had known fear, frenzy, hope, suspense, disap¬ 
pointment, discouragement, despair, and lassitude. In 
self-defense, in sheer inability of the human spirit to 
endure more than it has endured, she had thrown 
round her a hard little shell of refusal to hear of it 
again. She resented the reminder. She was pricked 
to a frantic excitement by a mere chance resemblance 
to the image of what the lost little boy might have 
become. 

A chance resemblance! He underscored the words. 
It was all there was. He himself was the son of 
Theodore and Lucy Whitelaw. At least he thought 
her name was Lucy. Not till he had been required 
to give the names of his parents for some school 
record did it occur to him that he didn’t positively 
know. She had always been “Mudda.” He hadn’t 
needed another name. After she had gone there had 
been no one to supply him with the facts he had not 
learned before. Even the Theodore would have 
escaped him had it not been for that last poignant 
scene, when she stood before the officer and gave a 
name—Mrs. Theodore Whitelaw! Why not? There 
were more Whitelaws than one. There was no 
monopoly of the name in the family that had lost 
the child. 

He didn’t often consciously think of her nowadays. 
The memory was not merely too painful; it was too 
destructive of the things he was trying to cherish. 
He had impulses rather than ideals, in that impulses 
form themselves more spontaneously; and all his im- 

287 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


pulses were toward rectitude. It was not a chosen 
standard; neither was it imposed upon him from with¬ 
out, unless it was in some vague general direction 
of the spirit received while at the Tollivants. He 
didn’t really think of it. He took it as a matter of 
course. He couldn’t be anything but what he was, 
and there was an end of it. But all his attempts to 
get a working concept of himself led him back to this 
beginning, where the fountain of life was befouled. 

So he rarely went back that far. He would go 
back to the Quidmores, to the Tollivants, to Mrs. 
Crewdson; but he stopped there. There he hung up a 
great curtain, soft and dim and pitiful, the veil of an 
immense tenderness. Rarely, very rarely, did he go 
behind it. He would not have done it on this after¬ 
noon had not the woman who had just gone out— 
dressed, as anyone could see, with the expensive easy¬ 
going roughness which only rich women can afford— 
neurotic, imperious, unhappy—had not this woman 
sent him there. She was a great lady whose tragic 
story haunted him ; but she turned his mind backward, 
as it hardly ever turned, to the foolish and misguided 
soul who had loved him. No one since that time, 
no one whatever in the life he could remember, had 
loved him at all, unless it were Honey, and Honey 
denied that he did. How could he forsake . . . ? 
And then it came to him what it was that pleaded 
within him not to be forsaken. 

The lecture was over. It was one of the first Tom 
had attended. The men, some hundred odd in number, 
were shuffling their papers, preparatory to getting up. 

288 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Seated in an amphitheater, they filled the first seven 
or eight semicircles outward from the stage. The 
arrangement being alphabetical, Tom, as a W, was in 
the most distant row. 

The lecturer, who was also putting his papers to¬ 
gether as they lay on a table beside him, looked up 
casually to call out, 

“If Mr. Whitelaw is here I should like to speak 
to him.” 

Tom shot from his seat and stood up. The man 
on his left did the same. Occupied with taking notes 
on the little table attached to the right arm—the only 
arm—of his chair, Tom had not turned to the left 
at all. He was surprised now at the ripple of laughter 
that ran among the men beginning to get up from 
their seats or to file out into the corridor. The pro¬ 
fessor smiled too. 

“You’re brothers?” 

Tom looked at his neighbor; his neighbor looked 
at Tom. Except for the difference in height the 
resemblance was startling or amusing, as you chose to 
take it. To the men going by it was amusing. 

It was the neighbor, however, who called out, in a 
shocked voice: “Oh, no, no! No connection.” 

“Then it’s to Mr. Theodore Whitelaw that I wish 
to speak.” 

Mr. Theodore Whitelaw made his way toward the 
platform, taking no further notice of Tom. 

For this lack of the friendly freemasonry general 
among young men, general among freshmen espe¬ 
cially, Tom thought he saw a reason. The outward 
appearance which enabled him to “place” Tad would 

289 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


enable Tad to “place” him. On the one there was the 
stamp of wealth; on the other there must be that of 
poverty. He might have met Tad Whitelaw any¬ 
where in the world, and he would have known him at 
a glance as a fellow nursed on money since he first 
lay in a cradle. It wasn’t merely a matter of dress, 
though dress counted for something. It was a matter 
of the personality. It was in the eyes, in the skin, 
in the look, in the carriage, in the voice. It was not 
in refinement, or cultivation, or cleverness, or use of 
opportunity; it was in something subtler than these, a 
cast of mind, a habit of thought, an acceptance, a self- 
confidence, which seeped through every outlet of 
expression. Tad Whitelaw embodied wealth, posi¬ 
tion, the easy use of whatever was best in whatever 
was material. You couldn’t help seeing it. 

On the other hand, he, Tom Whitelaw, probably 
bore the other kind of stamp. He had not thought 
of that before. In as far as he had thought of it, it 
was to suppose that the stamp could be rubbed off, or 
covered up. Clothes would do something toward that, 
and in clothes he had been extravagant. He had come 
to Harvard with two new suits, made to his order by 
the Jew tailor next door to Mrs. Danker’s. But in 
contrast with the young New Yorker his extravagance 
had been futile. He found for himself the most 
opprobrious word in all the American language— 
cheap. 

Very well! He probably couldn’t help looking 
cheap. But if cheap he would be big. He wouldn’t 
resent. He would keep his mouth shut and live. 
Things would right themselves by and by. 

290 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


They righted themselves soon. The three men 
with whom he shared the sitting room, having passed 
him as “a good scout,” admitted him to full and easy 
comradeship. In the common-room, in the classroom, 
he held his own, and made a few friends. Guy 
Ansley, urged in part by a real liking, and in part by 
the glory of having this big handsome fellow in tow, 
was generous of recognition. He was standing one 
day with a group of his peers from Doolittle and 
Pray’s when Tom chanced to pass at a distance. Guy 
called out to him. 

“Hello, you old sinner! Where you been this ever 
so long?” With a word to his friends, he puffed after 
Tom, and dragged him toward the group. “This 
is the guy they call the Whitelaw Baby. See how 
much he looks like Tad?” 

“Tad’ll give you Whitelaw Baby,” came from one 
of the group. “Hates the name of it. Don’t blame 
him, do you, when he’s heard everyone gassing about 
the kid all through his life?” 

But that he was going in Harvard by this nickname 
disturbed Tom not a little. Considering the legend 
in the Whitelaw family, and the resemblance between 
himself and Tad, it was natural enough. But should 
Tad hear of it . . . 

With Tad he had no acquaintance. As the weeks 
passed by he came to understand that with certain 
freshmen acquaintance would be difficult. They them¬ 
selves didn’t want it. It was a discovery to Tom that 
it didn’t follow that you knew a man, or that a man 
knew you, because you had been introduced to him. 
Guy Ansley had introduced him that day to the little 

291 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


group from Doolittle and Pray’s; but when he ran 
into them again none of them remembered him. 

So Tad Whitelaw did not remember him after hav¬ 
ing met him accidentally at Guy’s. The meeting 
had been casual, hurried, but it was a meeting. The 
two had been named to each other. Each had made 
an inarticulate grunt. But when later that same after¬ 
noon they passed in a corridor Tad went by as if he 
had never seen him. 

He continued to live and keep his mouth shut. If 
he was hurt there was nothing to be gained by saying 
so. Then an incident occurred which threw them to¬ 
gether in a manner which couldn’t be ignored in¬ 
wardly, even if outward conditions remained the same. 

Little by little the Harvard student, following the 
general sobering down which makes it harder for 
people in the twentieth century to laugh than it was 
to those who lived fifty years ago, was becoming less 
frolicsome. Pranks were still played, especially by 
freshmen, but neither so many nor so wild. The 
humor had gone out of them. 

But in every large company of young men there 
are a few whose high spirits carry them away. Where 
they have money to spend and no cares as to the 
future on their minds, the new sense of freedom natu¬ 
rally runs to roistering. In passing Tad Whitelaw’s 
rooms, which were also in Gore Hall, Tom often 
heard the banging of the piano, and those shouts of 
song and laughter which are likely to disturb the 
proctor. Guy, who was often the one at the piano, 
now and then gave him a report of a party, telling 
him who was at it, and what they had had to drink. 

292 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


In the course of the winter his relations with Guy 
took on a somewhat different tinge. In Guy’s circle, 
commonly called a gang or a bunch, he was Guy’s 
eccentricity. The Doolittle and Pray spirit allowed 
of an eccentricity, if it wasn’t paraded too much. 
Guy knew, too, that it helped to make him popular, 
which was not an easy task, to be known as loyal to a 
boyhood’s chum, when he might be expected to desert 
him. 

But behind this patronage the fat boy found in Tom 
what he had always found, a source of strength. Not 
much more than at school did he escape at Harvard 
his destiny as a butt. 

“Same old spiel, damn it,” he lamented to Tom, 
“just because I’m fat. What difference does that 
make, when you’re a sport all right? Doesn’t keep 
me from going with the gang, not any more than Tad 
Whitelaw’s big eyebrows, or Spit Castle’s long nose.” 

On occasions when he was left out of “good 
things” which he would gladly have been in he made 
Tom come round to his room in the evening for 
confidence and comfort. Tom never made game of 
him. There was no one else to whom he could turn 
with the certainty of being understood. Having an 
apartment to himself, he could be free in his com¬ 
plaints without fear of interruption. 

It was late at night. The two young men had been 
“yarning,” as they called it, and smoking for the past 
two hours. Tom was getting up to go back to his 
room, when a sound of running along the corridor 
caught their attention. 

“What in blazes is that?” 

293 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


By the time the footsteps reached Guy’s door 
smothered explosions of laughter could be heard out¬ 
side. With a first preliminary pound on the panels the 
door was flung open, Spit Castle and Tad Whitelaw 
hurling themselves in. Though they would have 
passed as sober, some of their excess of merriment 
might have been due to a few drinks. 

Tad carried a big iron door-key which he threw 
with a rattle on the table. His hat had been knocked 
to the back of his head; his necktie was an inch off- 
center; his person in general disordered by flight. 
Spit Castle, a weedy youth with a nose like a tapir’s, 
was in much the same state. Neither could tell what 
the joke was, because the joke choked them. Guy, 
flattered that they should come first of all to him, 
stood in the middle of the floor, grinning expectantly. 
Tom, quietly smoking, kept in the background, sitting 
on the arm of the chair from which he had just been 
getting up. As each of the newcomers tried to tell 
the tale he was broken in on by the other. 

“Came out from town by subway . . .” 

“Walking through Brattle Square . . .” 

“Not so much as a damn cat about . . .” 

“Saw little old johnny come abreast of little old 
bootstore ...” 

“Took out a key—opened the door—went into the 
shop in the dark—left the key in the keyhole to lock 
up when he comes outside again—just in for some¬ 
thing he'd forgot.” 

“And damned if Tad didn’t turn the key—quick 
as that—and lock the old beggar in.” 

294 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Last we heard of him he was poundin’ and squeal¬ 
in’ to beat all blazes.” 

Yellin’, ‘Pull -ice! — pull-ice !'—” whacking his leg, 
Spit gave an imitation of the prisoner—“and he’s in 
there yet.” 

To Guy the situation was as droll as it was to his 
two friends. An old fellow trapped in his own shop 1 
He was a Dago, Spit thought, which made the situa¬ 
tion funnier. They laughed till, wearied with laugh¬ 
ter, they threw themselves into armchairs, and lit 
their cigarettes. 

Tom, who had laughed a little not at their joke but 
at them, felt obliged, in his own phrase, to butt in. 
He waited till a few puffs of tobacco had soothed 
them. 

“Say, boys, don’t you think the fun’s gone far 
enough?” 

The two guests turned and stared as if he had 
been a talking piece of furniture. Tad took his 
cigarette from his lips. 

“What the hell business is it of yours?” 

Tom kept his seat on the arm of the chair, speaking 
peaceably. “I suppose it isn’t my business—except 
for the old man.” 

“What have you got to do with him? Is he your 
father ?” 

“He’s probably somebody’s father, and somebody’s 
husband. You can’t leave him there all night.” 

Spit challenged this. “Why can’t we?” 

“Because you can’t. Fellows like you don’t do that 
sort of thing.” 

It looked as if Tad Whitelaw had some special 

295 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


animosity against him, when he sprang from his chair 
to say insolently, “And fellows like you don’t hang 
round where they’re not wanted.’’ 

“Oh, Tom didn’t mean anything—” Guy began 
to interpose. 

“Then let him keep his mouth shut, or—” he 
nodded toward the door—“or get out.” 

Tom kept his temper, waiting till Tad dropped back 
into his chair again. “You see, it’s this way. The 
old chap has a home, and if he doesn’t come back to 
it in the course of, let us say, half an hour his family’ll 
get scared. If they hunt him up at the shop, and find 
he’s been locked in, they’ll make a row at the police 
station just across the street. If the police get in on 
the business they’re sure to find out who did it.” 

“Well, it won’t be you, will it?” Tad sneered again. 

“No, it won’t be me, but even you don’t want to 
be . . 

Tad turned languidly to Guy. “Say, Guy! Awful 
pity isn’t it about little Jennie Halligan! Cutest little 
dancer in the show, and she’s fallen and broken her 

leo- ” 

Tom got up, walked quietly to the table, picked up 
the key, and at the same even pace was making for 
the door, when Tad sprang in front of him. 

“Damn you! Where do you think you’re going?” 

“I’m going to let the old fellow out.” 

“Drop that key.” 

“Get out of my way.” 

“Like hell I’ll get out of your way.” 

“Don’t let us make a row here.” 

“Drop that key. Do you hear me?” 

296 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The rage in Tad’s face was at being disobeyed. He 
was not afraid of this fellow two inches taller than 
himself. He hated him. Ever since coming to 
Harvard the swine had had the impertinence to be 
called by the same name, and to look like him. He 
knew as well as anyone else the nickname by which 
the bounder was going, and knew that he, the bounder, 
encouraged it. It advertised him. It made him feel 
big. He, the brother of the Whitelaw Baby, had been 
longing to get at the fellow and give him a whack 
on the jaw. He would never have a better oppor¬ 
tunity. 

The lift of his hand and the grasp with which Tom 
caught the wrist were simultaneous. Slipping the key 
into his pocket, Tom brought his other hand into play, 
throwing the lighter-built fellow out of his path with 
a toss which sent him back against the desk. Mad¬ 
dened by this insult to his person, Tad picked up the 
inkstand on the desk, hurling it at Tom’s head. The 
inkstand grazed his ear, but went smash against the 
wall, spattering the new wallpaper with a great blob 
of ink. Guy groaned, with some wild objurgation. 
To escape from the room Tom had turned his back, 
when a blow from an uplifted chair caught him be¬ 
tween the shoulders. Wheeling, he wrenched the 
chair from the hands of Spit Castle, chucked it aside 
and dealt the young man a stinger that brought the 
blood from the ’tapir nose. All blind rage by this 
time, he caught the weedy youth’s head under his 
right arm, pounding the face with his left fist till he 
felt the body sagging from his hold. He let it go. 
Spit fell on the sofa, which was spattered with blood, 

297 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


as the wallpaper with ink. Startled at the sight of 
the limp form, he stood for a second looking down at 
it, when his skull seemed crashed from behind. Stag¬ 
gering back, he thought he was going to faint, but the 
sight of Tad aiming another thump at him, straight 
between the eyes, revived him to berserker fury. He 
sprang like a lion on an antelope. 

Strong and agile on his side, Tad was stiff to re¬ 
sistance. Before the sheer weight of Tom’s body 
he yielded an inch or two, but not more. Freeing his 
left hand, as he bent backward, he dealt Tom a bruis¬ 
ing blow on the temple. Tom disregarded it, pinning 
Tad’s left arm as he had already pinned the right. 
His object now was to get the boy down, to force 
him to his knees. It was a contest of brutal strength. 
When it came to brutal strength the advantage was 
with the bigger frame, the muscles toughened by 
work. The fight was silent now, nearly motionless. 
Slowly, slowly, as iron gives way to the man with the 
force to bend it, Tad was coming down. His feet 
were twisted under him, with no power to right them¬ 
selves. Two pairs of eyes, strangely alike, glared at 
each other, like the eyes of frenzied wild animals. 
Tad gave a quick little groan. 

“O God, my leg’s breaking.” 

Tom was not touched. “Damn you, let it break!” 

Pressed, pressed, pressed downward, Tad was sink¬ 
ing by a fraction of an inch each minute. The 
strength above him was pitiless. Except for the run¬ 
ning of water in the bathroom, where Guy had 
dragged Spit Castle tD wash his nose, there was no 
sound in the room but the long hard pantings, now 

298 



“GET UP, I TELL you” 













THE HAPPY ISLES 


from Tad’s side, now from Tom’s. In the intervals 
neither seemed to breathe. 

Suddenly Tad collapsed, and went down. Tom 
came on top of him. The heavier having the lighter 
fastened by arms and legs, the two lay like two stones. 
The faces were so near together that they could have 
kissed. Their long protruding eyebrows brushed 
each other’s foreheads. The weight of Tom’s bulk 
squeezed the breath from his foe, as a bear squeezes it 
with a hug. Nothing was left to Tad but resistance 
of the will. Of that, too, Tom meant to get the 
better. 

The words were whispered from one mouth into 
the other. “Do you know what I’m going to do with 
you ?” 

There was no answer. 

“I’m going to take you back with me to let that old 
man out of his shop.” 

There was still no answer. Tom sprang suddenly 
off Tad’s body, but with his fingers under the collar. 

“Get up!” 

He pulled with all his might. The collar gave way. 
Tad fell back. “Damned if I will,” was all he could 
say by way of defiance. 

Tom gave him a kick. “Get up, I tell you. If 
you don’t I’ll kick the stuffing out of you.” 

The kick hurt nothing but Tad’s pride; but it hurt 
that badly. It hurt it so badly that he got up, with no 
further show of opposition. He dusted his clothes 
mechanically with his hands; he tried to adjust his 
torn collar. His tone was almost commonplace. 

299 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“This has got to be settled some other time. What 
do you want me to do?” 

Tom pointed to the door. “What I want you to do 
is to march. Keep ahead of me. And mind you if 
you try to bolt HI wring your neck as if you were a 
cur. You—you—” He sought a word which would 
hit where blows had not carried—“you—coward!” 

The flash of Tad's eyes was like that of Tom's own. 
“We’ll see.” 

He went out the door, Tom close behind him. 

It was a March night, with snow on the ground, 
but thawing. They were without overcoats, and bare¬ 
headed. A few motor cars were passing, but not 
many pedestrians. 

“Run,” Tom commanded. 

He ran. They both ran. The distance being short, 
they were soon in Brattle Square. Tad stopped at a 
little shop, showing a faint light. There was too 
much in the way of window display to allow of the 
passer-by, who didn’t give himself some trouble, to 
see anything within. 

At first they heard nothing. Then came a whimper¬ 
ing, like that of a little dog, shut in and lonely, tired 
out with yelping. Putting his ear to the door, Tom 
heard a desolate, “Tam! Tam!” It was the only 
utterance. 

“Here’s the key! Unlock the door.” 

Tad did as he was bidden. Inside the “Tam! 
Tam!” ceased. 

“Now go in, and say you’re sorry.” 

As Tad hesitated Tom gave him a push. The door 

300 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


being now ajar the culprit went sprawling into the 
presence of his victim. 

There was a spring like that of a cat. There was 
also a snarl like a cat’s snarl. “You tam Harvard 
student!” 

Feeling he had done and said enough, Tom took 
to his heels; but as someone else was taking to his 
heels, and running close behind him, he judged that 
Tad had escaped. 

Back in his room, Tom felt spent. In his bed he 
was in emotional revolt against his victory. He 
loathed it. He loathed everything that had led up to 
it. The eyes that had stared into his, when the two 
had lain together on the floor, were like those of some¬ 
thing he had murdered. What was it? What was 
the thing that deep down within him, rooted in the 
primal impulses that must have been there before there 
was a world—what was the thing that had been 
devastated, outraged? Once more, he didn’t know. 


301 


XXXII 


T IFE resumed itself next day as if there had been 
no dramatic interlude. Proud of the scrap, as he 
named it, which had taken place in his room, Guy 
made the best of it for all concerned. His version 
was tactful, hurting nobody’s feelings. The trick on 
the old man was a merry one, and after a fight about 
its humor Tad Whitelaw and the Whitelaw Baby had 
run off together to let the old fellow out. Spit Castle’s 
tapir nose had got badly hurt in the scrimmage, and 
bled all over the sofa. The splash of ink on the wall 
was further evidence that Guy's room was a rendez¬ 
vous of sports. But sports being sports the honors 
had been even on the whole, and no hard feeling left 
behind. Tad and the Whitelaw Baby would now, 
Guy predicted, be better friends. 

But of that there was no sign. There was no sign 
of anything at all. When the Whitelaw Baby met 
the Whitelaw Baby’s brother they passed in exactly 
the same way as heretofore. You would not have 
said that the one was any more conscious of the 
other than two strangers who pass in Piccadilly or 
Fifth Avenue. In Tad there was no show of resent¬ 
ment; in Tom there was none of pride. As far as 
Tom was concerned, there was only a humiliated sense 
of regret. 

And then, in April, life again took another turn. 
Coming back one day to his rooms, Tom found a 

302 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


message requesting him to call a number which he 
knew to be Mrs. Danker’s. His first thought was of 
Maisie, with whom his letters had begun to be infre¬ 
quent. Mrs. Danker told him, however, that Honey 
had had an accident. It was a bad accident, how bad 
she didn’t know. Giving him the name of the hos¬ 
pital to which he had been taken, she begged him to 
go to him at once. After all the years they had lived 
with Mrs. Danker she considered them almost as 
relatives. 

The hospital, near the foot of Grove Street, pre¬ 
served the air of the sedate old Boston of the middle 
nineteenth century. Its low dome, its pillared facade, 
its grounds, its fine old trees, had been familiar to 
Tom ever since he had lived on Beacon Hill. In less 
than an hour after ringing up Mrs. Danker he was 
in the office asking for news. 

News was scanty. Expecting everyone to under¬ 
stand what he meant to Honey and Honey meant to 
him, he had looked for the reception which friends 
in trouble and excitement give to the friend who 
brings his anxiety to mix with theirs. It would be, 
“Oh, come in. Poor fellow, he’s suffering terribly. 
It happened thus and so.” But to the interne in the 
office, a young man wearing a white jacket, Honey 
was not so much as a name. His case was but one 
among other cases. A good many came in a day. 
In a week, or a month, or a year, there was no keep¬ 
ing account of them, except as they were registered. 
Individual suffering was lost sight of in the immense 
amount of it. But the interne was polite, and said 
that if Tom would sit down he would find out. 


303 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Among the hardest minutes Tom had ever gone 
through were those in the little reception room. Not 
only was there suspense; there was remorse. He had 
treated Honey like a cad. He had never been decent 
to him. He had never really been grateful. There 
had never been a minute, in the whole of the nearly 
six years they had lived together, in which he had 
not been sorry, either consciously or subconsciously, 
at being mixed up with an ex-convict. It was the 
ex-convict he had always seen before he had seen 
the friend. 

A second interne wearing a white jacket came to 
question him, to ask him who he was, and the nature 
of his business with the patient. If he was only a 
friend he could hardly expect to see him. The man 
was under opiates, he needed to be kept quiet. 

“What’s happened? What's the matter with him? 
I can’t find out.” 

The interne didn’t know exactly. He had been 
crushed. He was injured internally. The cause of 
the accident he hadn’t heard. 

“Could I see his nurse?” 

There was more difficulty about that, but in the 
end he was taken upstairs, where the nurse came out 
to the corridor to speak to him. She was a compe¬ 
tent, businesslike woman, with none of the emotion 
at contact with pain which Tom thought must be part 
of a nurse’s equipment. But she could tell him 
nothing definite. Not having been on duty when the 
case had been brought in, she had heard no more than 
the facts essential to what she had to do. 

“Do you think he’ll die?” 

304 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“You’d have to ask the doctor that. He's not dead 
now. That’s about as much as I can say." At sight 
of the big handsome fellow’s distress she partly re¬ 
lented. “You may come in and look at him. You 
mustn’t try to speak to him." 

He followed her into a long ward, with an odor 
of disinfectant. White beds, mostly occupied, lined 
each wall. Here and there was one surrounded by 
a set of screens, partially secluding a sufferer. At 
one such set they stopped. Through an opening be¬ 
tween two screens Tom was allowed to look at Honey 
who lay with face upturned, and no sign of pain on 
the features. He slept as Tom had seen him sleep 
hundreds of times when he expected to get up again 
next morning. The difference was in the expectation 
of getting up. Blinded by tears, Tom tiptoed away. 

When he came next day the effect of the opiate 
had worn off, and yet not wholly. Honey turned his 
head at his approach and smiled. Sitting beside the 
bed, Tom took the big, calloused hand lying outside 
the coverlet, and held it in his own relatively tender 
one. More than ever it was borne in on him at whose 
cost that tenderness had been maintained. Honey 
liked to have his hand held. A part of the wall of 
aloofness with which he had kept himself surrounded 
seemed to have broken down. 

A little incoherently he told what had happened. 
He had been stowing packing-cases in the hold of a 
big ship. The packing-cases were lowered by a 
crane. The crane as a rule was a good old thing, 
slow paced, gentle, safe. But this time something 
seemed to have gone wrong with her. Though his 

305 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


back was turned, Honey knew by the shadow above 
him that she was at her work. When he had got into 
its niche the case with which he was busy he would 
swing round and seize the new one. And then he 
heard a shout. It was a shout from the dock, and 
didn’t disturb him. He was about to turn when 
something fell. It struck him in the back. It was 
all he knew. He thought he remembered the blow, 
but was not certain whether he did or not. When 
he “came to” he had already been moved to the shed, 
and was waiting for the ambulance. He seemed not 
to have a body any more. He was only a head, like 
one of them there angels in a picture, with wings 
beneath their chins. 

He laughed at that, and with the laugh the nurse 
took Tom away; but when he came back on the fol¬ 
lowing day Honey’s mind was clearer. 

“I’ve made me will long ago,” he said, when Tom 
had given him such bits of news as he asked for. 
“It’s all legal and reg’lar. Had a lawyer fix it up. 
Never told yer nothink about it. Everythink left 
to you.” 

“Oh, Honey, don’t let us talk about that. You’ll 
be up and around in a week or so.” 

“Sure I’ll be up and around. Yer don’t think a 
little thing like this is goin’ to bust me. Why, I 
don’t feel ’ardly nothink, not below the neck. All 
the same, it can’t do no harm for you to know what’s 
likely to be what. If I was to croak, which I don’t 
intend to, yer’d have about sixteen hundred dollars 
what I’ve saved to finish yer eddication on. The will 
is in the bottom of me trunk at Danker’s.” 

306 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


On another day he said, “If anyone was to pop up 
and say I owed 'em that money, because I took it 
from ’em . . . ” 

He held the sentence there, leaving Tom to wonder 
if he had thoughts of restitution, or possibly of re¬ 
pentance. 

“I don’t owe ’em nothink,” he ended. “Belonged 
to me just as much as it belonged to them. Nothink 
don’t belong to nobody. I never was able to figger 
it out just the way I wanted to, because I ain’t never 
had no eddication; but Gord’s lor I believes it is 
Never could get the ’ang o’ the lor o’ man, not 
nohow.” 

To comfort him, Tom suggested that perhaps when 
he got through college he might be able to take the 
subject up. 

“I wouldn’t bind yer to it, Kiddy. Tough job! 
Why, when I give up socializin’ to try and win over 
some o’ them orthodocks I thought as they’d jump 
to ’ear me. Not a bit of it! The more I told ’em 
that nothink didn’t belong to nobody the more they 
said I was a nut.” 

Having lain silent for a minute he continued, with 
that light in his face which corresponded to a wink 
of the blind eye: “I don’t bind yer to nothink, Kiddy. 
That’s what I’ve always wanted yer to feel. You’re 
a free boy. When I’m up and around again, and 
yer’ve got yer eddication, and have gone out on yer 
own, yer won’t have me a-’angin’ on yer ’ands. No, 
sir! I’ll be off—free as a bird—back with the old 
gang again—and yer needn’t be worried a-thinkin’ 
I’ll miss you—nor nothink!” 

307 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was a few days after this that the businesslike 
nurse who had first admitted him hinted that, if she 
were Tom, Honey would have a clergyman come to 
visit him. A few days more and it might be too late. 

Honey with a clergyman! It was something Tom 
had never thought of. The incongruous combination 
made him smile. Nevertheless, it was what people 
who were dying had—a clergyman come to visit them. 
If a clergyman could do Honey any good . . . 

“Honey,” he suggested, artfully, next day, “now 
that you’re pinned to bed for awhile, and have got 
the time, wouldn’t you like to see a clergyman some¬ 
times, and talk things over?” 

There was again that light in the face which took 
the place of a wink. “What things?” 

Tom was nonplussed. “Well, I suppose, things 
about your soul.” 

“What’d a clergyman know about my soul? He 
might know about his own, but I know all about 
mine that I’ve got to know. ’Tain’t much—but it’s 
enough.” 

Tom was relieved. He didn’t want to disturb 
Honey by bringing in a stranger nor was he more 
sure than Honey that any good could be done by it. 
He was more relieved still when Honey explained 
himself further. 

“Do yer suppose I’ve come to where I am now 
without thinkin’ them things out, when Gord give me 
a genius for doin’ it? I don’t say I’ve did it as well 
as them as has had more eddication; but Gord takes 
us with the eddication what we’ve got. Eddication’s 
a fine thing; I don’t say contrairy; but I don’t believe 

308 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


as it makes no diff’rence to Gord. If you and me 
was before Him—me not knowin’ ’ardly nothink, and 
you stuffed as you are with learnin’ till you’re bustin’ 
out with it—I don’t believe as Gord’d say as there 
was a pinch o’ snuff between us—not to him there 
wouldn’t be.” A little wearily he made his confes¬ 
sion of faith. “Gord made me; Gord knows me; 
Gord’11 take me just the way I am and make the best 
o’ me, without no one else buttin’ in.” 

It was the middle of an afternoon. If anything, 
Honey was better. All spring was blowing in at the 
windows, while the trees were in April green, and 
the birds jubilant with the ecstasy of mating. 

“Beats everythink the way I dream,” Honey con¬ 
fided, in a puzzled tone. “Always dreamin’ o’ my 
mother. Haven’t ’ardly thought of her these years 
and years. Didn’t ’ardly know her. Died when I 
was a little kid; and yet . . . ” 

He lay still, smiling into the air. Tom was glad 
to find him cheerful, reminiscent. Never in all the 
years he had known him had Honey talked so much 
of his early life as within the last few days. 

“Used to take us children into the country to see 
a sister she had livin’ there . . . Little village in 
Cheshire called King’s Clavering. ... See that little 
cottage now . . . Thatched it was ... Set a few 
yards back from the lane. . . . Had flowers in the 
garden . . . musk . . . and poppies . . . and Lon¬ 
don pride . . . and Canterbury bells . . . and old 
man’s love . . . and cherry pie . . . and raggedy 

309 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Jack . . . and sailor’s sweetheart . . . funny how all 
them names comes back to me ...” 

Again he lay smiling. Tom also smiled. It was 
the first day he had had any hope. It was difficult 
not to have hope when Honey was so free from pain, 
and so easy in his mind. As to pain he had not had 
much since the accident had benumbed him; but 
there had always been something he seemed to want 
to say. To-day he had apparently said everything, 
and so could spend the half-hour of Tom’s visit on 
memories of no importance. 

“Always had custard for tea, my mother’s sister 
had. Lord, how us young ones’d ...” 

The recollection brought a happy look. Tom was 
glad. With pleasant thoughts Honey would not have 
the wistful yearning in his eyes which he had turned 
on him lately whenever he went away. 

“There was a hunt in Cheshire. Onst I saw a 
lord—a dook, I think he was—ridin’ to ounds. Sat 
his ’orse as if he was part of him, he did ...” 

This too died away without sequence, though the 
happy look remained. The smile grew rapt, distant 
perhaps, as memory took him back to long forgotten 
trifles. Just outside the window a robin fluted in a 
tree. 

Honey turned his head slightly to say: “Have I 
been asleep, Kid?” 

“No; you haven’t had your eyes shut.” 

“Oh, but I must have. Couldn’t dream if I was 
wide awake. I saw ma—just as plain as—” He 
recovered himself with a light laugh—“Wouldn’t it 

310 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


bust yer braces to ’ear me sayin’ ma? But that’s 
what us childern used to call . . . ” 

Once more he turned in profile, lying still, silent, 
radiant, occupied. The robin sang on. Tom looked 
at his watch. It was time for him to be stealing 
away. Now that Honey was better, he didn’t mind 
going without a farewell, because he could explain 
himself next time. He was glancing about for the 
nurse when Honey said, softly, casually, as if greet¬ 
ing an acquaintance: 

“Hello—ma!” 

He lifted both hands, but they dropped back, heav¬ 
ily. Tom, who had half risen, fell on his knees by 
the bedside, seizing the hand nearest him in both his 
own. 

“Honey! Honey! Speak to me!” 

But Honey’s good eye closed gently, while the head 
sagged a little to one side. The robin was still 
singing. 

Two letters received within a few days gave Tom 
the feeling of not being quite left alone. 

Dear Mr. Whitelaw 

In telling you how deeply we feel for you in your great 
bereavement I wish I could make you understand how sin¬ 
cerely we are all your friends. I want to say this specially, 
as I know you have no family. Family counts for much; 
but friends count for something too. It is George Sand 
who says: “Our relations are the friends given us by 
nature; our friends are the relations given us by God." 
Will you not think of us in this way?—especially of Guy 
and me. Whenever you are lonely I wish you would turn 

311 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to us, in thought at least, when it can’t be in any other 
way. When it can be—our hearts will always be open. 

Very sincerely yours, 

Hildred Ansley. 

The other letter ran: 

Dear Tom 

Now that you have got this great big incubous off your 
hands I should think you would try to do your duty by me 
and what you owe me. It seems to me I’ve been patient 
long enough. It is not as if you were the only peanut in 
the bag. There are others. I do not say this purposely. 
It is rung from me. I have done all I mean to do here, 
and will beat it whenever I get a good chance. I should 
think you would be educated by now. I graduated from 
high school at sixteen, and I guess I know as much as the 
next one. I’ve got a gentleman friend here, a swell fellow 
too, a travelling salesman, and he makes big money, and 
he says that if a fellow isn’t hitting the world by fifteen 
he’ll always be a quitter. Think this over and let me know. 
With passionate love. 

Maisie. 



312 


XXXIII 


/ T'HE day after Honey was buried Tom went to 
Mrs. Banker's to pay what was owing on the 
room rent, and take away his effects. The effects went 
into one small trunk which Mrs. Danker packed, while 
Tom sat on the edge of the bed and listened to her 
comments. A little wiry woman, prim in the old 
New England way, she was tireless in work and 
conversation. 

“He was a fine man, Mr. Honeybun was, and my 
land! he was fond of you. He'd try to hide it; but 
half an eye could see that he was that proud of you! 
He'd be awful up-and-coming while you was here, 
and make out that it didn’t matter to him whether 
you was here or not; but once you was away—my 
land! He’d be that down you’d think he’d never 
come up again. And one thing I could see as plain 
as plain; he was real determined that when you’d got 
up in the world he wasn’t going to be a drag on you. 
He’d keep saying that you wasn’t beholding to him 
for anything; and that he’d be glad when you could 
do without him so that he could get back again to 
his friends; but my land! half an eye could see.” 

During these first days Tom found the memory of 
a love as big as Honey’s too poignant to dwell upon. 
He would dwell upon it later, when the self-reproach 
which so largely composed his grief had softened 

313 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


down. All he could do as yet was to curse himself 
for the obtuseness which had taken Honey at the 
bluff of his words, when the tenderness behind his 
deeds should have been evident to anyone not a fool. 

He couldn’t bear to think of it. Not to think of 
it, he asked Mrs. Danker for news of Maisie. He 
had often wondered whether Maisie might not have 
told her aunt in confidence of her engagement to 
himself; and now he learned that she had not. 

“I hardly ever hear from her; but another aunt of 
Maisie’s writes to me now and then. Says that that 
drummer fellow is back again. I hope he’ll keep 
away from her. He don’t mean no good by her, and 
she goes daft over him every time he turns up. My 
land! how do we know he hasn’t a wife somewheres 
else, when he goes off a year and more at a time, on 
his long business trips ? This time he’s been to Aus¬ 
tralia. It was to get her away from him that I asked 
her to spend that winter in Boston; but now that he’s 
back—well, I’m sure I don’t know.” 

Tom had not supposed that at the suggestion of 
a rival he would have felt a pang; and yet he felt one. 

“Of course, there’s some one; we know that. It 
must be some one too who’s got plenty of money, 
because he’s given her a di’mond ring that must be 
worth five hundred dollars, her other aunt tells me, 
if it’s worth a cent. We know he makes big money, 
because he’s got a fine position, and his family is one 
of the most high thought of in Nashua. That’s part 
of the trouble. They’re very religious and toney, so 
they wouldn’t think Maisie a good enough match for 
him. Still, if he’d only do one thing or the other, 

314 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


keep away from her, or ask her right out and out 
to marry him . . . ” 

Tom was no longer listening. The mention of 
Maisie’s diamond had made him one hot lump of 
shame. He knew more of the cost of jewels now 
than when he had purchased the engagement ring, 
and even if he didn’t know much he knew enough. 

A few days later he was in Nashua. He went, 
partly because he had the day to spare before he took 
up college work again, partly because of a desire to 
learn what was truly in Maisie’s heart, partly to make 
her some amends for his long neglect of her, and 
mostly because he needed to pour out his confession 
as to the diamond ring. Having been warned of his 
coming, Maisie, who had got rid of the children for 
an hour or two, awaited him in the parlor. 

A little powder, a little unnecessary rouge, a sweater 
of imitation cherry-colored silk, gave her the vivid¬ 
ness of a well-made artificial flower. Even Tom 
could see that, with her neat short skirt and high- 
heeled shoes, she was dressed beyond the note of 
the shabby little room; but if she would only twine 
her arms around his neck, and give him one of the 
kisses that used to be so sweet, he could overlook 
everything else. 

Her eyes on the big square cardboard box he car¬ 
ried in his hand, she received him somberly. Having 
allowed him to kiss her, she sat down at the end of 
a table drawn up beside the window, while he put 
the box in front of her. 

“What’s this ?” 

He placed himself at the other end of the table, 

3i5 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


having its length between them. Because of his wan¬ 
ing love, because of the ring above all, he had done 
one of those reckless things which sometimes render 
men exultant. From his slender means he had filched 
a hundred dollars for a set of furs. He watched 
Maisie’s face as she untied knots and lifted the cover 
of the band-box. 

On discovering the contents her expression became 
critical. She fingered the fur without taking either 
of the articles from the box. Turning over an edge 
of the boa, she looked at the lining. It was a minute 
or two before she took out the muff and held it in 
her hands. She examined it as if she were buying 
it in a shop. 

“That’s a last year’s style,” was her first observa¬ 
tion. “It’ll be regular old-fashioned by next winter, 
and, of course, I shouldn’t want a muff before then. 
The girls’ll think I got them second-hand when they’re 
as out of date as all that. They're awful particular 
in Nashua, more like New York than Boston.” She 
shook out the boa. “Those little tails are sweet, but 
they don’t wear them now. How much did you 
give ?” 

He told her. 

“They’re not worth it. It’s the marked-down sea¬ 
son too. Some one’s put it over on you. I could 
have got them for half the price—and younger. 
These are an old woman’s furs. The girls’ll say my 
aunt in Boston’s died, and left them to me in her will.” 

Brushing them aside, she faced him with her re¬ 
sentful eyes. Her hands were clasped in front of 
her, the diamond flashing on the finger resting on a 

316 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

table-scarf of thin brown silk embroidered in magenta 
ferns. 

“Well, Tom, what’s your answer to my letter?” 

At any other minute he would have replied gently, 
placatingly; but just now his heart was hot. A hun¬ 
dred dollars had meant much to him. It would have 
to be paid back in paring down on all his necessities, 
in food, in carfares, even in the washing of his 
clothes. He too clasped his hands on the table, facing 
her as she faced him. He remembered afterward 
how blue her eyes had been, blue as lapis lazuli. All 
he could see in them now was demand, and further 
demand, and demand again after that. 

“Have I got to give you an answer, Maisie? If 
so, it’s only the one I’ve given you before. We’ll be 
married when I get through college, and have found 
work.” 

“And when’ll that be?” 

“I’m sorry to say it won’t be for another two years, 
at the earliest.” 

“Another two years, and I’ve waited three already!” 

“I know you have. But listen, Maisie! When we 
got engaged I was only sixteen. You were only 
eighteen. Even now I’m only nineteen, and you’re 
only twenty-one. We’ve got lots of time. It would 
be foolish for us to be married ...” 

She broke in, drily. “So I see.” 

“You see what, Maisie?” 

“What you want me to see. If you think I’m 
dying to marry you ...” 

“No, I’m not such an idiot as that. But if we’re in 
love with each other, as we used to be . . . ” 

3i7 


r 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“As you used to be.” 

“As I used to be of course; and you too, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

“Oh, you needn’t kill yourself supposing.” 

He drew back. “What do you mean by that, 
Maisie?” 

“What do you think I mean?” 

“Well, I don’t know. It sounds as if you were 
trying to tell me that you’d never cared anything 
about me.” 

“How much did you ever care about me?” 

“I used to think I couldn’t live without you.” 

“And you’ve found out that you can.” 

“I’ve had to, for one thing; and for another, I’m 
older now, and I know that nobody is really essential 
to anybody else. All the same—” 

“Yes, Tom; all the same—what?” 

“If you’d be willing to take what I can offer you—” 

“Take what you can offer me! You’re not offering 
me anything.” 

He explained his ambitions, for her as well as fof 
himself. Life was big; it was full of opportunity; 
his origin didn’t chain any man who knew how to 
burst its bonds. He did know. He didn’t know how 
he knew, but he did. He just had it in him. When 
you knew you had it in you, you didn’t depend on 
anyone to tell you; you yourself became your own 
corroboration. 

But in order to fulfil this conviction of inner power 
you needed to know things. You needed the experi¬ 
ence, the standing, the rubbing up against other men, 
which you got in college in a way that you didn’t get 

3i8 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

anywhere else. You got some of it by going into 
business, but only some of it. In any case, it was 
no more than a chance in business. You might get 
it or you might not. With the best will in the world 
on your part, it might slip by you. In college it 
couldn’t slip by you, if you had any intelligence at 
all. All the past experience of mankind was gath¬ 
ered up there for you to profit by. You could only 
absorb a little of it, of course. But you acquired 
the habit of absorbing. It was not so much what you 
learned that gave college its value; it was the learn¬ 
ing of a habit of learning. You got an attitude of 
mind. Your attitude of mind was what made you, 
what determined your place in the world. With a 
closed mind you got nowhere; with an open mind the 
world was as the sea driving all its fish into your net. 
College opened the mind; it was the easiest method 
by which it could be done. If she would only be 
patient till he had got through the preliminary train¬ 
ing and had found the job for which he would be 
fitted . . . 

“But what’s the use of waiting when you can get 
a job for which you’d be fitted right off the bat? 
There’s a family up here on the hill that wants a 
shofer. They give a hundred and twenty-five a 
month. Why go to all that trouble about opening 
your mind when here’s the job handed out to you? 
The gentleman-friend I told you about says that busi¬ 
ness has got college skinned. He says colleges are 
punk. He says lots of men in business won’t take a 
man if he’s been to college. They’d want a fellow 
with some get-up-and-get to him.” 

3i9 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He began to understand her as he had never done 
before. Maisie had the closed mind. She was 
Honey’s “orthodock,” the type which accepts the limi¬ 
tations other people fix for it. He registered the 
thought, long forming in his mind subconsciously, 
that among American types the orthodock is the com¬ 
monest. It was not true, as so often assumed, that 
the average American is keen to forge ahead and 
become something bigger than he is. That was one 
of the many self-flattering American ideals that had 
no relation to life. Mrs. Ansley’s equality of oppor¬ 
tunity was another. People passed these phrases on, 
and took for granted they were true, when in every¬ 
day practice they were false. 

There could be no breaking forth into a larger life 
so long as the national spirit made for repression, sup¬ 
pression, restriction, and denial. Maisie was but one 
of the hundred and sixteen millions of Americans out 
of a possible hundred and seventeen on whom all the 
pressure of social, industrial, educational, and reli¬ 
gious life had been brought to bear to keep her mind 
shut, her tastes puerile, and her impulses to expansion 
thwarted. With a great show of helping and blessing 
the less fortunate, American life, he was coming to 
believe, was organized to force them back, and beat 
them into subjection. The hundred and seventeenth 
million loved to believe that it wasn’t so; it was not 
according to their consciences that it should be so; 
but the result could be seen in the hundred and sixteen 
million minds drilled to disability, as Maisie’s was. 

A young man not yet hardened to life’s injustices, 
he saw himself rushing to Maisie’s aid, to make the 

320 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


best of her. Experience would help her as it had 
helped him. The shriveled bud of her mind would 
unfold in warmth and sunshine. This would be in 
their future together. In the meantime he must clear 
the ground of the present by getting rid of pretence. 

‘There’s one thing I want to tell you, Maisie, some¬ 
thing I’m rather ashamed of.” 

The lapis lazuli eyes widened in a look of wonder. 
He might be going to tell her of another girl. 

“You know, as I’ve just said, that when we got 
engaged I was only sixteen. I didn’t know anything 
about anything. I thought I did, of course; but then 
all fellows of sixteen think that. I’d never had any¬ 
one to teach me, or show me the right hang of things. 
You saw for yourself how I lived with Honey; and 
before that, as you know, I’d been a State ward. 
Further back than that—but I can’t talk about it 
yet. Some day when we’re married, and know each 
other better—” 

“I’m not asking you. I don’t care.” 

“No, I know you don’t care, and that you’re not 
asking me; but I want you to understand how it was 
that I was so ignorant, so much more ignorant than 
I suppose any other fellow would have been. When 
I went out to buy that ring you’ve got on—” 

He knew by the horror in her face that she divined 
what he had to tell her. He knew too that she had 
already been afraid of it. 

“You’re not going to say that it isn’t a real dia¬ 
mond?” 

To nerve himself he had to look at her steadily. 
Confessing a murder would have been easier. 

321 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“No, Maisie, it isn’t a real diamond. At the time 
I bought it I didn’t know what a real diamond was. 
I’m not sure that I know now—” 

He stopped because, without taking her eyes from 
his, she was slipping the ring from her finger. She 
was slipping, too, an illusion from her mind. He 
knew now that to be trifled with in love, to be be¬ 
trayed in a great trust, would be small things to 
Maisie as compared to this kind of deception. Her 
wrath and contempt were the more scathing to behold 
because of her cherry-colored prettiness. 

The ring lay on the table. Drawing in the second 
finger of her right hand, she made of it a spring 
against her thumb. She loosed the spring suddenly. 
The faked diamond sped across the table hitting 
against his hand. He picked it up, putting it out of 
sight in his waistcoat pocket. For a fellow of nine¬ 
teen, eager to be something big, no lower depth of 
humiliation could ever be imagined. 

Maisie stood up. “You cheap skate!” 

He bowed his head as a criminal sometimes does 
when sentenced. He had no protest to make. A 
cheap skate was what he was. He sat there crushed. 
Skirting round him as if he were defiled, she went 
out into the little entry. 

He was still sitting crushed when she came back. 
She did not pause. She merely flung his hat on the 
table as she went by. It was a cheap skate’s hat, a 
brown soft felt, shapeless, weather-stained, three 
years out of style. With no further words, she 
opened the door into the adjoining room, passed 
through it, and closed it noiselessly behind her. 

322 


XXXIV 


"C'OR probating Honey’s will he asked leave to come 
and consult Mr. Ansley. An appointment was 
made for an evening when that gentleman was to be 
at home. 

Tom, who had some gift for character, was begin¬ 
ning to understand him. Understanding him, it 
seemed to him that he understood all that old Boston 
which had once been a national institution, a force 
in the country’s history, and now, like a man retired 
from business, sat resting on its hill. 

Old Boston was more significant, however, than a 
man retired from business, in that it was to a great 
degree a man retired from the pushing of ideals. 
Generous once with the hot generosity of youth, keen 
to throw itself into the fight against wrongs, ready to 
be slaughtered in the van rather than compromise on 
principles, old Boston had now reached the age of 
mellowness. It had grown weary in well-doing. It 
had done enough. Contending with national evils 
had proved to be futile. National evils had grown 
too big, too many, too insurgent. Better make the 
best of life as your people mean to live it. Keep 
quiet; take it easy; save money; let the country 
gang its own gait. A big turbulent country, with 
no more respect for old Boston than for the 
prophet Jeremiah, it wallowed in prosperous vul- 

323 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


garity. Let it wallow! With solid investments 
in cotton and copper old Boston could save its own 
soul. It withdrew from its country; it withdrew 
from its state; it withdrew from its own city. 
Where its ancestors had made the laws and ad¬ 
ministered them, it became, like those proud old 
groups of Spaniards still to be found in California, 
a remnant of a former time, making no further stand 
against the invader. With a little art, a little litera¬ 
ture, a little music, a little education, a little religion, 
a little mild beneficence, and a great deal of astute 
financial and professional ability, it could pass its 
time and keep its high-mindedness intact. 

To Tom’s summing up this was Philip Ansley. He 
was able, public-spirited, and generous; but he was 
disillusioned. The United States of his forefathers, 
of which he kept the ideal in his soul, had turned into 
such a hodgepodge of mankind, that he had neither 
hope nor sentiment with regard to it. In his heart 
he believed that its governments were in the hands 
of what he called a bunch of crooks. With con¬ 
gresses, state legislatures, and civic councils elected 
by what to him were hordes of ignoramuses, with 
laws dictated by cranks and fanatics, with the old- 
time liberties stampeded by the tyranny of majorities 
lacking a sense of responsibility, he deemed it prudent 
to follow the line of least resistance and give himself 
to making money. Apart from casting his vote for 
the Republican ticket on election days, he left city, 
state, and country to the demagogues and looters. 
He was sorry to do this, yet with the world as it 
was, he saw no help for it. 

324 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


But he served as director on the boards of a good 
many companies; he was an Overseer of Harvard, a 
trustee of the Museum of Fine Arts, the treasurer of 
several hospitals, a subscriber to every important 
philanthropic fund. His club was the Somerset ; his 
church was Trinity. For old Boston these two facts 
when taken together placed him in that sacred shrine 
which in England consecrates dowager duchesses. 

When Tom was shown up he found his host in 
the room where two years earlier they had talked 
over the place as chauffeur, but he was no longer awed 
by it. Neither was he awed by finding Ansley wear¬ 
ing a dinner-jacket simply because it was evening. 
The conventions and amenities of civilized life were 
becoming a matter of course to him. 

“How d’ye do? Come in. Sit down. What’s 
the weather like outside? Still pretty cold for April, 
isn’t it?” 

Though he offered his hand only from his arm¬ 
chair, where he sat reading the evening paper, he 
offered it. It was also a tribute to Tom’s prog¬ 
ress that he was asked to take a seat. A still further 
sign of his having reached a position remotely on a 
footing of equality with the Ansleys was an invita¬ 
tion to help himself from a silver box of cigarettes. 

Having respectfully declined this honor, as Ansley 
himself was not smoking, he stated his errand. If 
Mr. Ansley would introduce him to some young in¬ 
expensive lawyer, who would tell him what to do in 
the probating of Honey’s will . . . 

The business was soon settled. In possession of 
Ansley’s card with a scribbled line on it, Tom rose to 

325 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


take his leave. Ansley rose also, but moved toward 
the fireplace, where a few sticks were smoldering, as 
if he had something more to say. 

“Wait a minute. Sit down again. Have a ciga¬ 
rette.” 

As Ansley himself lighted a cigar, Tom took a 
cigarette from the silver box, and leaned against the 
back of the big chair from which he had just risen. 
Once more he was struck by the resemblance between 
the shrewd close-lipped face, dropping into its medi¬ 
tative cast, and the lampshade just below it, parch¬ 
ment with a touch of rose, and an inner light. Ansley 
puffed for a minute or two pensively. 

“You’ve no family, I believe. You haven’t got 
the complications of a lot of relatives.” 

Tom was surprised by the new topic. “No, sir. 
I wish I had, but—” 

“Oh, well, for a young fellow like you, bound to 
get on—” He dropped this line to take up another. 
“I’m thinking about Guy. Occurred to me the other 
day that while he’d been dragged about Europe a good 
many times he didn’t know anything of his own coun¬ 
try. Never been west of the Hudson.” 

Tom smoked and wondered. 

“I’ve suggested to him to take his summer’s vaca¬ 
tion and wander about. Get the lay of the land. 
Could cover a good deal of ground in three months. 
Zigzag up and down—Niagara—Colorado—Chicago 
—Grand Canyon—California—Seattle—back if he 
liked by the Canadian Pacific. What would you 
think?” 

“I think it would be great.” 

326 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Would you go with him?” 

It seemed to Tom that his brain was spinning 
round. Not only was he too dazed to find words, 
but the question of money came first. How could 
he afford . . . ? 

But Ansley went on again. “It’s a choice between 
you and a tutor. My wife would like a tutor. Guy 
wants you. So do I. You’d have your traveling 
expenses, of course—do everything the same as Guy 
—and, let us say, five hundred dollars for your time. 
Would that suit you?” 

He didn’t know how to answer. Excitement, 
gratitude, and a sense of insufficiency churned to¬ 
gether and choked him. It was only by spluttering 
and stammering that he could say at last: 

“If—if Mrs. Ansley—d-doesn’t w-want me—” 

“Oh, she’d give in. Simply feels that Guy’d get 
more good out of it if he had some one to point out 
moral lessons as he went along. I don’t. Two 
young fellows together, if they’re at all the right kind, 
’ll do each other more good than all the law and the 
prophets.” 

“But would you mind telling me, sir, something of 
what you’d expect from me?” 

“Oh, nothing! Just play round with him, and have 
a good time. You seem to chum up with him all 
right.” 

Tom was distressed. “Yes, sir, but if I’m to be— 
to be paid for chumming up with him I should have 
to—” 

“Forget it. I want Guy to take the trip. It’s not 
the kind of trip anyone wants to take alone, and 

327 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


you’re the fellow he'd like to have with him. I’d like 
it too. You understand him.” 

He turned round to knock the ash from his cigar 
into the dying fire. 

“Trouble with Guy is that he has no sense of 
values. Thing he needs to learn is what’s worth while 
and what’s not. I don’t want you to teach him. I 
just want him to see. What do you say?” 

Tom hung his head, not from humility but to 
think out a point that troubled him. 

“You know, sir”—he looked up again—“that when 
Guy and I get together we talk about things that— 
well, that you mightn’t like.” 

“I don’t care a hang what you talk about.” 

“Yes, sir; but this is something particular.” 

“Well, then, keep it to yourself.” 

“I can’t keep it to myself because—because some 
day you might think that I’d had a bad ... as long 
as we’ve just been chums . . . and I wasn’t paid—” 

Ansley moved away from the fireplace, striding up 

and down in front of it. 

* 

“Look here, my boy! I know what young fellows 
are. I know you talk about things you wouldn’t 
bring up before Mrs. Ansley and me. I don’t care. 
It’s what I expect. Do you both good. You’re not 
specially vicious, either of you, and even if you 
were—” 

“It’s not a matter of morals, sir; it’s one of opin¬ 
ions.” 

He dismissed this lightly. “Oh, opinions!” 

“But this is a special kind of opinion. You see, 
sir, I’ve always been poor. I’ve lived among poor 

328 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


people. I’ve seen how much they have to go without. 
And I begin to see all that rich people have more than 
they need—more than they can ever use.” 

“Oh, quite so! I see ! I see ! And you both get a 
bit revolutionary. Go to it, boy! Fellows of your 
age who’re not boiling over with rebellion against 
social conditions as they are ’ll never be worth their 
salt. Don't say anything about it before Mrs. Ansley, 
but between yourselves. . . . Why, when I was an 
undergraduate . . . You’ll live through it, though. 
. . . The poor people don’t want any champions. . . . 
They don’t want to be helped. . . . You get sick of it 
in the long run. . . . But while you’re young boil 
away. ... If that’s all that bothers you. ...” 

Tom explained that it was all that bothered him, and 
the bargain was struck. He had expressed his thanks, 
shaken hands, and reached the threshold on the way 
out when Ansley spoke again. 

“Guy tells me that out at Cambridge they call you 
the Whitelaw Baby. I suppose you know all about 
yourself—your people—where you began—that sort 
of thing?” 

He decided to be positive, laconic, to do what he 
could to squelch the idea in Ansley’s mind. 

“Yes, sir; I do.” 

“Then that settles that.” 




XXXV 


B ETWEEN the end of the college year and the 
departure on the journey westward there was to 
be an interval of three weeks. Mrs. Ansley had in¬ 
sisted on that. She was a mother. For eight or nine 
months she had seen almost nothing of her boy. Now 
if he was to be taken from her for the summer, and 
for another college year after that, she might as well 
not have a son at all. 

Tom was considering where he should pass the 
intervening time when the following note unnerved 
him. 

Dear Mr. Whitelaw 

Mother wants to know if when college closes, and Guy 
joins us in New Hampshire, you will not come with him 
for the three weeks before you start on your trip. Please 
do. I shall have got there by that time, and I haven’t seen 
you now for nearly two years. We must have a lot of 
notes to compare, and ought to be busy comparing them. 
Do come then, for our sakes if not for your own. You 
will give us a great deal of pleasure. 

Yours very sincerely, 

Hildred Ansley. 

His heart failed him. It failed him because of the 
details as to customs, etiquette, and dress he didn’t 
know anything about. He should be called on to 
speak fluently in a language of which he was only 

330 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


beginning to spell out the little words. It seemed to 
him at first that he couldn’t accept the invitation. 

Then, not to accept it began to look like cowardice. 
He would never get anywhere if he funked what he 
didn’t know. When you didn’t know you went to 
work and found out. You couldn’t find out unless 
you put yourself in the way of seeing what other 
people did. After twenty-four hours of reflection he 
penned the simplest form of note. Thanking Hildred 
for her mother’s kind invitation, he accepted it. Be¬ 
fore putting his letter in the post, however, he dropped 
in to call on Guy. Guy, who was strumming the 
Love-Death of Isolde, tossed his comments over his 
shoulder as he thumped out the passion. 

“That’s Hildred. She’s made mother do it. Nutty 
on that sort o? thing.” 

Tom’s heart failed him again. “Nutty on what sort 
of thing?” 

Isolde’s anguish mounted and mounted till it 
seemed as if it couldn’t mount any higher, and yet 
went on mounting. “Oh, well! She’s toted it up that 
you haven’t got a home—that for three weeks after 
college closes you’ll be on the town—and so on.” 

“I see.” 

“All the same, come along. I’d just as soon. Dad 
won’t be there hardly. The old lady’ll be booming 
about, but you needn’t mind her. You’ll have your 
room and grub for those three weeks, and that’s all 
you’ve got to think about. Anyhow, it’s bats in the 
attic with Hildred the minute it comes to a lame dog.” 

While Guy’s fat figure swayed over the piano, 
Isolde’s great heart broke. Tom went back to his 

33i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


room and wrote a second answer, regretting that 
owing to the pressure of his engagements he would be 
unable . . . 

And then there came another reaction. What did it 
matter if Hildred Ansley was opening the door out of 
pity? Pity was one of the loveliest traits of charac¬ 
ter. Only a cad would resent it. He sent his first 
reply. 

Having done this, he felt it right to go and call on 
Mrs. Ansley. He was sure she didn’t want him in 
New Hampshire, but by taking it for granted that she 
did he would discount some of her embarrassment. 

As Mrs. Ansley was not at home Pilcher held out a 
little silver tray. Tom understood that he should have 
had a card to put in it. A card was something of 
which he had never hitherto felt the need. He said 
so to Pilcher frankly. 

Pilcher’s stony medieval face, the face of a saint on 
the portal of some primitive cathedral, smiled rarely, 
but when it did it smiled engagingly. 

“You’ll find a visitin’ card very ’andy, Mr. Tom, 
now that you’re so big. Mr. Guy has had one this 
long spell back.” 

It was a lead. In shy unobtrusive ways Pilcher 
had often shown himself his friend. Tom confessed 
his yearning for a card if only he knew how to order 
one. 

“I’ll show you one of Mr. Guy’s. He always has 
the right thing. I’ll find out too where he gets them 
done. If you’ll step in, Mr. Tom . . ” 

As he waited in the dining room, with the good- 
natured Ansley ancestor smiling down at him, there 

332 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


floated through Tom’s mind a phrase from the Bible 
as taught by Mrs. Tollivant. “The Lord sent His 
angel.” Wasn’t that what He was doing now, and 
wasn’t the angel taking Pilcher’s guise? When the 
heavenly messenger came back with the card Tom 
went straight to his point. 

“Pilcher, I wonder if you’d mind helping me?” 

“I’d do it and welcome, Mr. Tom.” 

Mr. Tom told of his invitation to New Hampshire, 
and of his ignorance of what to do and wear. If 
Pilcher would only give him a hint . . . 

He could not have found a better guide. Pilcher 
explained that a few little things had to be as second 
nature. A few other little things were uncertain 
points as to which it was always permissible to ask. 
In the way of second nature Tom would find sporting 
flannels and tennis shoes an essential. So he would 
find a dinner-jacket suit, with the right kind of shirt, 
collar, tie, shoes, and socks to wear with it. As to 
things permissible to ask about, Pilcher could more 
easily explain them when they were both in the same 
house. Occasions would crop up, but could not be 
foreseen. 

“The real gentry is ever afraid of showin’ that they 
don’t know. They takes not knowin’ as a joke. 
Many’s the time when I’ve been waitin’ at table I’ve 
’eard a born gentleman ask the born lady sittin’ next 
to ’im which’d be the right fork to use, and she’d say 
that she didn’t know but was lookin’ round to see 
what other people done. That’s what they calls hease 
of manner, Mr. Tom.” 

Under the Ansley roof he would meet none but the 

333 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


gentry born. Any one of them would respect him 
more for asking when he didn’t know. It was only 
the second class that bothered about being so terribly 
correct, and they were not invited by Mrs. Ansley. 
In addition to these consoling facts Tom could always 
fall back on him, Pilcher, as a referee. 

Being a guest in a community in which two years 
earlier he had been a chauffeur Tom found easier 
than he had expected because he worked out a for¬ 
mula. He framed his formula before going to New 
Hampshire. 

“Servants are servants and masters are masters 
because they divide themselves into classes. The one 
is above, and is recognized as being above; the other 
is below, and is recognized as being below. I shall be 
neither below nor above; or I shall be both. I will not 
go into a class. As far as I know how I’ll be every¬ 
body’s equal.” 

He had, however, to find another formula for this. 

“You’re everybody’s equal when you know you 
are. Whatever you know will go of itself. The 
trouble I see with the bumptious American, who 
claims that he’s as good as anybody else, is that he 
thinks only of forcing himself to the level of the 
highest; he doesn’t begin at the bottom, and cover 
all the ground between the bottom and the top. I’m 
going to do that. I shall be at home among the lot 
of them. To be at home I must feel at home. I 
mustn’t condescend to the boys of two years ago 
who’ll still be driving cars, and I mustn’t put on airs 
to be fit for Mrs. Ansley’s drawing-room. I must be 
myself. I mustn’t be ashamed because I’ve been in a 

334 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


humble position; and I mustn’t be swanky because 
I’ve been put in a better one. I must be natural; I 
must be big. That’ll give me the ease of manner 
Pilcher talks about.” 

With these principles as a basis of behavior, his 
embarrassments sprang from another source. They 
began at the station in Keene. He knew he was to 
be met; and he supposed it would be by Guy. 

“Oh, here you are!” 

She came on him suddenly in the crowd, tall, free 
in her movements, always a little older than her age. 
If in the nearly two years since their last meeting 
changes had come to him, more had apparently come 
to her. She was a woman, while he was not yet a 
man. She was easy, independent, taking the lead with 
natural authority. From the first instant of shaking 
hands he felt in her something solicitous and pro¬ 
tective. 

It showed itself in the little things as to which 
awkwardness or diffidence on his part might have 
been presumed. So as not to leave him in doubt of 
what he ought to do, she took the initiative with an 
air of quiet, competent command. She led the way 
to the car; she told him to throw his handbags and 
coat into the back part of it; she made him sit beside 
her as she drove. 

“No, I’m going to drive,” she insisted, when he 
had offered to take the wheel. “I want you to see 
how well I can do it. I like showing off. This is my 
own car. I drove it all last summer.” 

They talked about cars and their makes because 
the topic was an easy one. 

335 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Speeding out of Keene, they left behind them the 
meadows of the Ashuelot to climb into a country 
with which Nature had been busy ever since her first 
flaming forces had cooled down to form a world. 
Cooling down and flinging up, she had tossed into 
the azoic age a tumble of mountains higher doubtless 
than Andes or Alps. Barren, stupendous, appalling, 
they would not have been easy for man, when he 
came, to live with in comfort, had not the great 
Earth-Mother gone to some pains to polish them 
down. Taking her leisure through eons of years, 
she brought from the north her implement, the ice. 
Without haste, without rest, a few inches in a century, 
she pushed it against the barrier she meant to mold 
and penetrate. 

As a dyke before the pressure of a flood, the bar¬ 
rier broke here, broke there, and yet as a whole main¬ 
tained itself. Heights were cut off from heights. 
Valleys were carved between them. What was sharp 
became rounded; what was jagged was worn smooth. 
The highest pinnacles crashed down. When after 
thousands of years the glacial mass receded, only the 
stumps were left of what had once been terrific 
primordial elevations. 

Dense forests began to cover them. Lakes formed 
in the hollows. Little rivers drained them, to be 
drained themselves by a nameless stream which fell 
into a nameless sea. Through ages and ages the 
thrushes sang, the wild bees hummed, and the bear, 
the deer, the fox, the lynx ranged freely. 

Man came. He came stealthily, unnoted, leaving 
so light a trace that nothing remains to tell of his 

k 336 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


first passage but a few mysterious syllables. The 
river once nameless became the Connecticut; the base 
of a mighty primeval mountain bears the Nipmuck 
name Monadnock. 

In this angle of New Hampshire thrust in between 
Massachusetts and Vermont names are a living record. 
The Nipmuck disappeared in proportion as the rest¬ 
less English colonists pushed farther and farther 
from the sea. They came in little companies, gener¬ 
ally urged by some religious disagreement with those 
they had left behind. To escape the “Congregational 
way” they fled into the mountains. There they were 
free to follow the “Episcoparian way.” As “Episco- 
parians” they printed the map with names which en¬ 
shrined their old-home memories. Clustering within 
sight of the blue mass of Monadnock are neat white 
towns—Marlborough, Richmond, Chesterfield, Wal¬ 
pole, Peterborough, Fitzwilliam, Winchester—rich 
with “Episcoparian” suggestion. 

In the early eighteenth century there came in an¬ 
other strain. Driven by famine, a thousand pilgrims 
arrived in these relatively empty lands from the North 
of Ireland, sturdy, strong-minded, Protestant. 
Grouping themselves into three communities, they 
named them with Irish names, Antrim, Hillsborough, 
Dublin. It was to Dublin that Tom and Hildred 
were on the way. 

The subject of cars exhausted, she swung to some¬ 
thing else. 

“You like the idea of going with Guy?” 

“It’s great.” 

“I like it too. I’d rather he was with you than 

337 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


with anybody. You never make game of him, and yet 
you never humor him.” 

“What do you mean by that, that I never humor 
him?” 

“Oh, well! Guy’s standards aren’t very high. We 
know that. But you never lower yours.” 

“How do you know I don’t?” 

“Because Guy says so. Don’t imagine for a minute 
that he doesn’t see. He likes you so much because he 
respects you.” 

“He respects a lot of other fellows too.” 

A little “H’m 1” through pursed-up lips was a sign 
of dissent. “I wonder. He goes with them, I know, 
and rather envies them, which is what I mean by his 
standards not being very high; but—” 

“Oh, Guy’s all right. The fellows you speak of 
are sometimes a little fresh; but he knows where to 
draw the line. He’ll go to a certain point; but you 
won’t get him beyond it.” 

“And he owes that to you.” 

“Oh, no, he doesn’t, not in the least.” 

“Well, I —” she held the personal pronoun for em¬ 
phasis—“think he does.” 

In this good opinion she was able to be firm be¬ 
cause she seemed older than he. In reality she was 
two years younger, but life in a larger society had 
given her something of the tone of a woman of the 
world. This development on her part disconcerted 
him. So long as she had been the slip of a thing 
he remembered, prim, sedate, old-fashioned as the 
term is applied to children, she had not been a factor 
in his relations with the Ansley family. Now, sud- 

338 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


denly, he saw her as the most important factor of all. 
The emergence of personality troubled him. Since 
she was obliged to keep her eyes on the turnings of 
the road, he was able to study her in profile. 

It was the first time he had really looked at a 
woman since he had summed up Maisie in Nashua. 
That had been two months earlier. The place which 
Maisie had so long held in his heart had been empty 
for those two months, except for a great bitterness. 
It was the bitterness of disillusion, of futility. Rage 
and pain were in it, with more of mortification than 
there was of either. He would never again hear of a 
cheap skate without thinking of the figure he had cut 
in the eyes of the girl whom he thought he was honor¬ 
ing merely in being true. All girls had been hateful 
to him since that day, just as all boys will be to a 
dog who has been stoned by one of them. Yet here 
he was already looking at a girl with something like 
fascination. 

That was because fascination was the emotion she 
evoked. She was strange; she was arresting. You 
wondered what she was like. You watched her when 
she moved; you listened to her when she talked. 
Once you had heard her voice, bell-like and crystalline, 
you would always be able to recall it. 

He noticed the way she was dressed because her 
knitted silk sweater was of a pattern he had never 
seen before. It ran in horizontal dog-toothed bands, 
shading from green to blue, and from blue to a dull 
red. Green was the predominating color, grass-green, 
jade-green, sea-green, sage-green, but toned to sobriety 
by this red of old brick, this blue of indigo. Indigo 

339 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


was the short plain skirt, and the stockings below it. 
An indigo tam-o’-shanter was pinned to her smooth, 
glossy, bluish-black hair with a big carnelian pin. He 
remembered that he used to think her Cambodian. 
He thought so again. 

Having arrived at the house, they found no one but 
Pilcher to receive them. Mrs. Ansley had gone out to 
tea; Mr. Guy had left word for Miss Hildred to 
bring Mr. Tom to the club, where he was playing 
tennis. 

“Do you care to go?” 

Knowing that he couldn’t spend three weeks in 
Dublin without facing this invitation, he had decided 
in advance to accept it the first time it came. 

“If you go.” 

“All right; let’s. But you’d like first to go to your 
room, wouldn’t you ? Pilcher, take Mr. Whitelaw up. 
I’ll wait here with the car. We’ll start as soon as you 
come down.” Rupning up the stairs, he wondered 
whether it would be the proper thing for him to 
change to his new white flannels, when, as if divining 
his perplexity, she called after him. “Come just as 
you are. Don’t stop to put on other things. I’ll go 
as I am too.” 

This maternal foresight was again on guard as 
they turned from the road into the driveway to the 
club. 

“Do you want to come and be introduced to a lot 
of people, or would you rather browse about by your¬ 
self ? You can do whichever you like.” 

He replied with a suggestion. As a good many 
cars would be parked in the narrow space of the 

340 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


club avenues, he thought she had better jump out at 
the club steps, leaving him to find a space where the 
car could stand. He would hang around there till 
Guy’s game was over and the party was ready to go 
home. 

Having parked the car, he was in with the chauf¬ 
feurs, some of whom were old acquaintances. True 
to his formula, he went about among them, shaking 
hands, and asking for their news. They were oddly 
alike, not only in their dustcoats and chauffeurs’ caps, 
but in features and cast of mind. 

“You got a job?” he was asked in his turn. 

“Been taken on to travel with young Ansley. We 
stay here for three weeks, and then go out west.” 

“Loot pretty good?” 

“Oh, just about the same, and, of course, I get my 
expenses.” 

“Pretty soft, what?” came from an Englishman. 

“Yes, but then it’s only for the summer.” 

These duties done, he felt free to stroll off till he 
found a convenient rock on which to sit by the lake¬ 
side. Lighting a cigarette, he was glad of a half 
hour to himself in which to enjoy the scene. It was 
a reposeful scene, because all that was human and 
sporting in it was lost in the living spirit of the back¬ 
ground. 

It was what he had always felt in this particular 
landscape, and had never been able to define till now— 
its quality of life. It was life of another order from 
physical life, and on another plane. You might have 
said that it reached you out of some phase of creation 
different from that of Earth. These hills were living 


34i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


hills; th’is lake was a living lake. Through them, as 
in the serene sky, a Presence shone and smiled on you. 
He had often noticed, during the summer at the inn- 
club, that you could sit idle and silent with that Pres¬ 
ence, and not be bored. You looked and looked; you 
thought and thought; you were bathed about in tran¬ 
quillity. People might be running around, and calling 
or shouting, as they were doing now in the tennis 
courts on a ledge of the hillside above him, not five 
hundred yards away, but they disturbed you no more 
than the birds or the butterflies. The Presence was 
too immense, too positive, to allow little things to 
trouble it. Rather, it took them and absorbed them, 
as if the Supreme Activity, which for millions of years 
before there was a man had been working to trans¬ 
form this spot into a cup of overflowing loveliness, 
could use anything that came Its way. 

So he sat and smoked and thought and felt soothed. 
It was early enough in the summer for the birds to be 
singing from all the wooded terraces and the fringe 
of lakeside trees. Calls from the tennis courts, cries 
from young people climbing on the raft in the lake 
or diving from the spring-board, came to him softened 
and sweet. It was living peace, invigorating, restful. 


342 


XXXVI 


A WOMAN passed along the driveway, and looked 
^ at him. He looked at her. The rock on which 
he sat being no more than a dozen yards from where 
she walked, they could see each other plainly. It 
seemed to him that as she went by she relaxed her 
pace to study him. She was a little woman, pretty, 
sad-faced, neatly dressed and perhaps fifty years of 
age. Having passed once, she turned on her steps 
and passed again. She passed a third time and a 
fourth. Each time she passed she gave him the same 
long scrutinizing look, without self-consciousness or 
embarrassment. He thought she might be a lady’s 
maid or a chauffeur’s wife. 

He turned to watch a young man taking a swan 
dive from the spring-board. Having run the few 
steps which was all the spring-board allowed of, he 
stood poised on the edge, feet together, his arms at 
his thighs. With the leap forward his arms went 
out at right angles. When he turned toward the 
water they bent back behind his head, his palms 
twisted upward. Nearing the surface they pointed 
downward, cleaving the lake with a clean, splashless 
penetration. The whole movement had been lithe 
and graceful, the curve of a swan’s neck, the spring 
of a flying fish. 

Not till she was close beside him did he notice that 
the little woman had left the roadway, crossed the 

343 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


intervening patch of blueberry scrub, and seated her¬ 
self on a low bowlder close to his own. 

Her self-possession was that of a woman with a 
single dominating motive. “You’ve just arrived with 
Miss Ansley, haven’t you?” 

The voice, like the manner, was intense and pur¬ 
poseful. In assenting, he had the feeling of touching 
something elemental, like hunger or fire, which 
wouldn’t be denied. 

“And you’re at Harvard.” 

He assented to this also. 

“At Harvard they call you the Whitelaw Baby, 
don’t they?” 

“I’ve heard so. Why do you ask?” 

“Because I’m the nurse from whom the Whitelaw 
baby was stolen nearly twenty years ago. My name 
is Nash.” 

A memory came to him of something far away. 
He could hear Honey saying he had seen her, a pretty 
little Englishwoman, and that Nash was her name. 
Looking at her now, he saw that she was more than a 
pretty little Englishwoman; she was a soul in torture, 
with a flame eating at the heart. He felt sorry for 
her, but not so sorry as to be free from impatience 
at the dogging with which the Whitelaw baby fol¬ 
lowed him. 

“Why do you say this to me ?” 

“Because of what I’ve heard from the family. 
They’ve spoken of you. They think it—queer.” 

“They think what queer ?” 

“That your name is Whitelaw—that your father’s 
name was Theodore—that you look so much like the 

344 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

rest of them. Mr. Whitelaw’s name is Henry Theo¬ 
dore—” 

'‘And my father’s name was only Theodore. My 
mother’s name was Lucy. I was born in The Bronx. 
I’m exactly nineteen years of age. I’ve heard that 
Mr. Whitelaw’s son if he were living now would be 
twenty.” 

Large gray eyes with silky drooping lids rested 
on his with a look of long, slow searching. “You’re 
sure of all that?” 

He tried to laugh. “As sure as you can be of 
what’s not within your own recollection. I’ve been 
told it. I’ve reason to believe it.” 

“I’d no reason to believe that I should ever find 
my boy again; but I know I shall.” 

“That must be a comfort to you in the trial you’ve 
had to face.” 

“It hasn’t been a trial exactly, because you bear 
a trial and live through it. This has been spending 
every day and every night in the lake of fire and 
brimstone. I wonder if you’ve any idea of what it’s 
like.” 

“I don’t suppose I have.” 

“If you did have—” He thought she was going 
to say that if he did have he would allow himself to 
become the Whitelaw baby in order to relieve her 
anguish, but she struck another note. “I hadn’t the 
least suspicion of what had been done to me till the 
two footmen had lifted the little carriage up over the 
steps and into the hall. Then I raised the veil to take 
my baby out, and I—I fell in a dead swoon.” 

He waited for her to go on again. 

345 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Try to imagine what it is to find in place of the 
living child you’ve laid in its bed with all the tender¬ 
ness in your soul—to find in place of that a dirty, 
ugly, stuffed thing, about a baby’s size. . . .For days 
after that I was just as if I was drugged. If I came 
to for a few minutes I prayed that I mightn’t live. I 
didn’t want to look the mother and father in the face.” 

“But hadn’t you told them anything about it?” 

“There was nothing to tell. The baby had van¬ 
ished. I’d seen nothing; I’d heard nothing. Neither 
had my friend who was with me, and who’s married 
now, in England. If an evil spirit had done it, it 
couldn’t have been silenter, or more secret. It was a 
mystery then; it’s been a mystery ever since.” 

“But you raised an alarm? You made a search?” 

“The whole country raised the alarm. There wasn’t 
a corner, or a suspicious character, that wasn’t 
searched. We knew it had been done for ransom, and 
the ransom was ready if ever the baby had been re¬ 
turned. The father and mother were that frantic 
they’d have done anything. There never was a baby 
in the world more loved, or more lovable. All three 
of us—the father, the mother, and myself—would 
have died for him.” 

He grew interested in the story for its own sake. 
“And did you never get any idea at all?” 

“Nothing that ever led to anything. For a good 
five years Mr. Whitelaw never rested. Mrs. White- 
law—but it’s no use trying to tell you. It can’t be 
told; it can’t be so much as imagined. Even when 
you've lived through it you wonder how you ever did. 
You wonder how you go on living day by day. It’s 

346 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


almost as if you were condemned to eternal punish¬ 
ment. The clues were the worst.” 

“You mean that—?” 

“If we could have known that the child was dead— 
well, you make up your mind to that. After a while 
you can take up life again. But not to know any¬ 
thing! Just to be left wondering! Asking yourself 
what they’re doing with him!—whether they’re giv¬ 
ing him the right kind of food!—whether they’re 
giving him any kind of food!—whether they’re 
going to kill him, and how they’re going to kill him, 
and who’s to do the killing! To go over these ques¬ 
tions morning, noon, and night—to eat with them, 
and sleep with them, and wake with them—and then 
the clues!” 

“You said they were the worst.” 

“Because they ajways made you hope. No matter 
how often you’d been taken in you were ready to be 
taken in again. Each time they said there was a 
chance you couldn’t help thinking that there might be 
a chance. It didn’t matter how much you told your¬ 
self it wasn’t likely. You couldn’t make yourself 
believe it. You felt that he’d have to be found, that 
he couldn’t help being found. The whole thing was 
so impossible that you’d have to go to his room and 
look at his little empty crib to persuade yourself that 
he wasn’t there.” 

To divert her from going over the ground she must 
have gone over thousands of times already, he broke 
in with a new line of thought. 

“But I’ve heard that they don’t want to find him 
now—a grown-up man.” 


347 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She stared at him fiercely. “I do. I want to find 
him. They were not to blame. I was. It makes the 
difference.” 

“Still he was their son.” 

“He was their son, and they've suffered; but they 
can rest in spite of their suffering. I can’t. They 
can afford to give up hope because they’ve nothing 
with which to reproach themselves. If they were 
me— 

He began to understand. “I see. If you could 
find him and bring him back, even if they didn’t want 
him—” 

“I should have done that much. It would be some¬ 
thing. It’s why I pleaded with them to let me stay 
with them when I suppose the very sight of me must 
have tortured them. I swore that I’d give my life 
to trying to—” 

“But what could you do when even the child's 
father, with all his money, couldn’t—?” 

“I could pray. They pouldn’t. They’re not like 
that. Praying’s all I’ve ever done which wasn’t done 
by somebody else. I've prayed as I don’t think many 
people have ever prayed; and now I’ve come to 
where—” 

“Where what?” 

The light in her eyes was lambent, leaping and 
licking like a flame. 

“Where I'm quieter.” She made her statement 
slowly. “I seem to know that he'll be given back to 
me because the Bible says that when we pray believing 
that we have what we ask for we shall receive it. 
Latterly I’ve believed that. I haven’t forced myself 

348 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to believe it. It’s just come of its own accord—some¬ 
thing like a certainty.” 

The claim in the look which without wavering fixed 
itself upon him prompted another question. “And 
has that certainty got anything to do with me?” 

“I wonder if it hasn’t.” 

“But I don’t see how it can have, when you never 
saw me in your life till twenty minutes ago.” 

“I never saw you; but I’d heard of you. I meant 
to see you as soon as I got a chance. I never got it 
till to-day.” 

“But how did you know?” 

“That it was you? This way. You see I’m here 
with Miss Lily. She’s staying for a few nights at 
the inn-club before going to make some visits.” 

“Who’s Miss Lily?” 

“She was the second of the two children born after 
my little boy was taken. First there was Mr. Tad. 
Then there was a little girl. She knows Miss Ansley. 
Miss Ansley told her you were coming up, that you’d 
very likely be here this afternoon, so I came and 
waited. Even if I hadn't seen you drive up with, 
her—if we’d met in the heart of Africa—I’d have 
known. . . . You’ve been taken for Mr. Tad already. 
You know that, don’t you?” 

“I know there’s a resemblance.” 

“It’s more than a resemblance. It’s—it’s the v/hole 
story. Mr. Whitelaw himself saw it first. When he 
came back after meeting you, in this very place, nearly 
two years ago, he was—well, he was terribly upset. 
If it hadn’t been for Mr. Tad and Miss Lily—” 

“And their mother too.” 


349 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Yes, I suppose; and their mother too. But that’s 
not what we’re considering. Whether they want you 
or not, if you are the boy—” 

He tried to speak very gently. “But you see, I 
couldn’t be. I had a mother. I don't remember 
much about her because I was only six or seven when 
she died. But two things I recall—the way she loved 
me, and the way I loved her. If I thought there was 
any truth in what you—in what you suspect—I 
couldn’t love her any more.” 

“I don't see why.” 

“Because I should be charging her with a crime. 
Would you do that—to your own mother—after she 
was dead?” 

“If she was dead it wouldn't matter.” 

“Not to her. But it would to me.” 

“It couldn’t do you any harm.” 

“I’m the only judge of that.” 

There was exasperation in the eyes which seemed 
unable to tear themselves from his face. 

“But most people would like to have it proved that 
they’d been—” 

“Been born rich men’s sons. That’s what you 
were going to say, isn’t it? I daresay I should have 
liked it, if . . . But what’s the use? We don’t gain 
anything by discussing it. You want to find some 
one who'll pass for the lost boy. I understand that; 
and I understand how much it would lessen all the 
grief—” 

She interrupted quickly. “Yes, but I wouldn’t try 
to foist an imposter on them, not if it would take me 
out of hell. If I didn’t believe—” 

350 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“But you don’t believe now; you can’t believe. 
What I’ve told you about myself must make believing 
impossible.” 

“Oh, if I hadn’t believed when believing was im¬ 
possible I shouldn’t have the little bit of mind I’ve 
got now. Believing when it was impossible was all 
that kept me sane.” 

“But you won’t go on doing it, not as far as I’m 
concerned?” 

She rose, with dignity. “Why not? I shan’t be 
hurting you, shall I ? In a way we all believe it—even 
the Whitelaw family—even Miss Ansley.” 

He jumped up, startled. “Did she tell you so?” 

“She didn’t tell me so exactly. We were talking 
about it—we’ve all talked of it more than you sup¬ 
pose—and Miss Ansley said that you couldn’t be what 
you are unless you were— somebody .” 

He tried to take this jocosely. “No, of course I 
couldn’t.” 

“Oh, but I know what she meant.” She moved 
away from him, speaking over her shoulder as she 
crossed the blueberry scrub, “It was more than what’s 
in the words.” 


351 


XXXVII 


Tj' XCEPT for a passing glimpse in Dublin, Tom 
never saw Lily Whitelaw till in December he met 
her at the ball at which Hildred Ansley came out. 
As to going to this ball he had his usual fit of funk, 
but Hildred had insisted. 

“But, Tom, you must. You’re the one I care most 
about.” 

“I shouldn’t know what to do.” 

“I’ll see to that. You’ll only have to do what I 
tell you.” 

“And I haven’t got an evening coat with tails.” 

“Well, get one. If you look as well in it as you do 
in your dinner-jacket outfit—and you’d better have a 
white waistcoat, a silk hat, and a pair of white gloves. 
What’ll happen to you when you get there you can 
leave to me. Now that I know you look so well, and 
dance so well, you’ll give me no trouble at all.” 

Her kindness humbled him. He felt the necessity 
of taking it as kindness and nothing more. Knowing 
too that he must school his own emotions to a sense of 
gratitude, he imagined that he so schooled them. 

With the five hundred dollars he had earned through 
the summer added to what remained of Honey’s leg¬ 
acy, he had enough for his current year at Harvard, 
with a margin over. The tailed evening coat, the 
white waistcoat, the silk hat, the gloves, he looked 
upon as an investment. He went to the ball. 

352 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


It was given at the Shawmut, the new hotel with 
a specialty in this sort of entertainment. The ball¬ 
room had been specially designed so as to afford a 
spectacle. A circular cup, surrounded by a pillared 
gallery for chaperons and couples preferring to “sit 
out,” you descended into it by one of four broad 
shallow staircases, whence the coup d’oeil was superb. 

By being more or less passive, he got through the 
evening better than he had expected. Knowing 
scarcely anyone, he fell back on his formula. 

“I mustn’t be conscious of it. I must take not 
knowing anyone for granted, as I should if I were 
in a crowd at a theater, or the lobby of this hotel. 
If I feel like a stray cat I shall look like a stray cat. 
If I feel at ease I shall look at ease.” 

In this he was supported by the knowledge of wear¬ 
ing the right thing. Even Guy, whom he had met 
for a minute in the cloakroom, had been surprised 
into a compliment. 

“Gee whiz! Who do you think you are? The old 
lady’s been afraid you’d look like an outsider. Now 
she’ll be struck silly. Lot of girls here that you’ll put 
their eye out.” 

When he had shaken hands Hildred found a minute 
in which to whisper, “Tom, you’re the Greek god you 
read about in novels. Don’t feel shy. All you need 
do is to stand around and be ornamental. Your role 
is the romantic unknown.” She returned after the 
next bout of “receiving.” “You and I will have the 
supper dance. I’ve insisted on that, and mother’s 
given in. Don’t get too far out of reach, so that I can 
put my hand on you when I want you.” 

353 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He danced a little, chiefly with girls whom no one 
else would dance with and to whom some member 
of the Ansley family introduced him. When not 
dancing he returned to the gallery, where he leaned 
against a convenient pillar and looked on. It was 
what he best liked doing. Liking it, he did it well. 
He could hear people ask who he was. He could hear 
some Harvard fellow answer that he was the White- 
law Baby. Once he heard a lady say, as she passed 
behind his back, “Well, he does look like the White- 
laws, doesn’t he?’’ 

The New York papers had recalled the Whitelaw 
baby to the public mind in connection with the ball 
given a few weeks earlier to “bring out” Lily White- 
law. Once in so often the whole story was rehearsed, 
making the younger Whitelaws sick of it, and their 
parents suffer again. The fact that Tad and Lily 
Whitelaw were there that night gave piquancy to the 
presence of the romantic stranger. His stature, his 
good looks, his natural dignity, together with the 
mystery as to who he was, made him in a measure the 
figure of the evening. 

From where he stood by his pillar in the gallery he 
recognized Lily in the swirl below, a slim, sinuous 
creature in shimmering green. All her motions were 
serpentine. She might have been Salome; she might 
also have been a shop girl, self-conscious and eager 
to be noticed. Whatever was outrageous in the dances 
of that autumn she did for the benefit of her elders. 

When she turned toward him he could see that she 
had an insolent kind of beauty. It was a dark, spoiled 
beauty that seemed lowering because of her heavy 

354 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Whitelaw eyebrows, and possibly a little tragic. In 
thought he could hear Hildred singing, as she had 
sung when he stayed with them at Dublin in the 
spring, “Is she kind as she is fair? For beauty lives 
by kindness.” Lily’s beauty would not. It was an 
imperious beauty, willful and inconsiderate. 

Fie saw Hildred dancing too. She danced as if 
dancing were an incident and not an occupation. She 
had left more important things to do it; she would go 
back to more important things again. While she was 
at it she took it gayly, gracefully, as all in the eve¬ 
ning’s work, but as something of no consequence. 
She was in tissue of gold like an oriental princess, a 
gold gleam in her oriental eyes. An ermine stole as a 
protection against draughts was sometimes thrown 
over her shoulders, but more often across her arm. 

He noticed the poise of her head. No other head 
in the world could have been so nobly held, so superbly 
independent. Its character was in its simplicity. 
Fashion did not exist for it. The glossy dark hair 
was brushed back from forehead and temples into a 
knot which made neatness a distinction. Distinction 
was the chief beauty in the profile, with its rounded 
chin, its firm, small, well-curved lips, and a nose 
deliciously snub. Decision, freedom, unconscious¬ 
ness of self, were betrayed in all her attitudes and 
movements. Merely to watch her roused in him a 
dull, aching jealousy for Lily. He surprised himself 
by regretting that Lily hadn’t been like this. 

Imperious, willful, and inconsiderate Lily seemed to 
him again as she drank champagne and smoked 
cigarettes at supper. The party at her table, which 

355 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


was near the one at which he sat with Hildred, was 
jovial and noisy. Lily's partner, a fellow whom he 
knew by sight at Harvard, drank freely, laughed 
loudly, and now and then slapped the table. Lily 
too slapped the table, though she did it with her fan. 

In the early morning—it might have been two 
o’clock—Tom found himself accidentally near her 
when Hildred happened to be passing. 

“Oh, Lily! I want to introduce Mr. Whitelaw. 
He’s got the same name as yours, hasn’t he? Tom, 
do ask her to dance.” 

With her easy touch-and-go she left them to each 
other. Without a glance at him, Lily said, tonelessly, 

“I’m not going to dance any more. I’m going to 
look for my, brother and go home.” 

A whoop from the other side of the ballroom, 
where a rowdy note had come over the company, 
gave an indication of Tad’s whereabouts. Tom sug¬ 
gested that he might find him and bring him up. Lily 
walked away without answering. 

Hildred hurried back. “I’m sorry. I saw what 
she did. Try not to mind it.” 

“Oh, I don’t. I decided long ago that one couldn’t 
afford to be done down by that sort of thing. It pays 
in the end to forget it.” 

“One of these days she’ll be sorry she did it. Your 
innings will come then.” 

“I’m not cra^y for an innings. But time does 
avenge one, doesn’t it ?” He nodded toward the ball¬ 
room floor, where Lily, with a stalking, tip-toeing 
tread was pushing a man backward as if she would 
have pushed him down had he not recovered his 

356 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


balance and begun pushing her. “It avenges one even 
for that. Two minutes ago she said she wasn’t going 
to dance any more.” 

“Well, she’s changed her mind. That’s all. Come 
and take a turn with me.” 

The affectionate solicitude in her tone was not pre¬ 
cisely new to him, but for the first time he dared 
to wonder if it could be significant. By all the 
canons of life and destiny she was outside his range. 
She could take this intimate, sisterly way with him, 
he had reasoned hitherto, because she was so far above 
him. She was the Oueen; he vras only Ruy Bias, a 
low-born fellow in disguise. If he found himself 
loving her, if there was something so sterling and 
womanly in her nature that he couldn’t help loving 
her, that would be his own lookout. He had made 
up his mind to that before the end of his three weeks 
in Dublin in the spring. Her tactful camaraderie 
then had carried him over all the places which in the 
nature of things he might have found difficult, doing 
it with a sweet assumption that they had an aim in 
common. Only they had no aim in common! Be¬ 
tween him and her there could be nothing but pity 
and kindness on the one side, with humility and devo¬ 
tion on the other. 

He had felt that till to-night. He had felt it to¬ 
night up to the minute of hearing those words, “Come 
and take a turn with me.” The difference was in 
her voice. It had tones of comfort and encourage¬ 
ment. More than that, it had tones of comprehension 
and concern. She entered into his feelings, his strug¬ 
gles, his sympathies, his defeats. In the very way in 

357 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


which she put one hand on his shoulder and placed 
the other within his own he thought there might be 
more than the conventional gesture of the dance. 

“You don’t know how much I appreciate your com¬ 
ing to-night,” she said, when she found an oppor¬ 
tunity. “If you hadn’t come I should have felt it as 
much as if father, or mother, or Guy hadn’t come. 
More, I think, because—well, I don’t know why— 
because. I only believe that I should have. It’s 
been an awful bore to you, too.” 

“No, it hasn’t. I’ve seen a lot. I like to get the 
hang of—of this sort of thing. I don’t often get a 
chance.” 

“I thought of that. It seemed to me that the ex¬ 
perience would be something. Everything’s grist that 
comes to your mill, so that the more you see of things 
the better.” 

That was all they said, but when he left her she held 
his hand, she let him hold hers, till their arms were 
stretched out to full length. Even then her eyes 
smiled at him, and his smiled down into hers. 

Having seen other people go, he decided to slip 
away himself. But in the cloakroom he found Tad, 
white and sodden in a chair, his hands thrust into 
his trousers’ pockets, his legs stretched wide apart in 
front of him. No one was there but the cloakroom 
attendant who winked at Tom, as one who would 
understand the effect of too much champagne. 

“Too young a head. Ought to be got home.” 

“I’ll take him. Know where he lives. Going his 
way. Ask some one to call us a taxi.” 

Tad made no remonstrance as they helped him into 

358 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


his overcoat, and rammed his hat on his head. He 
knew what they were doing. “Home !” he muttered. 
“Home bes’ place! Bed! God, I cou’ go to sleep right 
now.” 

He did go to sleep in the taxi, his head on Tom’s 
shoulder. Tom held him up, with his arm around his 
waist. Once more he had the feeling that had stirred 
in him before, of something deeper than the common 
human depths, primitive, pre-social, antedating 
languages and laws. “He’s not my brother,” he de¬ 
clared to himself, “but if he were . . .” He couldn’t 
end that sentence. He could only feel glad that, since 
the boy had to be taken home, the task should have 
fallen to him. 

At Westmorley Court, where Tad now had his 
quarters, there was no difficulty of admittance. In his 
own room he submitted quietly to being undressed. 
Tom even found a suit of pajamas, stuffing the limp 
form into it. He got him into bed; he covered him 
up. Winding his watch, he put it on the night-table. 
All being done, he stooped over the bed to lift the arm 
that had flung aside the bedclothes, and put it under 
them again. 

He staggered back. There flashed through his 
mind some of the stories by which Honey had ac¬ 
counted for the loss of his eye. His own left eye felt 
smashed in and shattered. He was sick; he was 
faint. He could hardly stand. He could hardly 
think. The room, the world, were flying into splinters. 

“You damn sucker! Get out of this!” 

By the time Tom had recovered himself Tad was 
settling to sleep. 


359 


XXXVIII 


OTHING but the knowledge that the boy was 
^ ™ drunk had kept him from striking back there 
and then. His temper was a hot one. It came in 
fierce gusts, which stormed off quickly. The quick¬ 
ness saved him now. Before he was home in bed he 
had reconciled himself to bearing this thing too. It 
was bigger to bear it, more masculine, more civilized. 
He would never forget his racking remorse after the 
last fight. 

He didn’t lose his eye, but he was obliged to see 
an oculist. The oculist pronounced it a close shave. 

“Where in thunder did you get that?” Guy de¬ 
manded, a day or two after the occurrence. 

Tom thought it an opportunity to learn whether 
or not the boy had been conscious of what he did. 
“Ask Tad Whitelaw.” 

“What f You don't mean to say you’ve had another 
row with him ! Gee whiz!” 

“No, I haven’t had another row with him; but all 
the same, ask him.’’ 

Guy asked him, with no information but that the 
mucker would get another if he didn’t keep out of 
the way. It was all Tom needed to know. He had 
not been too drunk to strike with deliberate inten¬ 
tion, and to remember that he had struck. 

Guy must have told Hildred, because she wrote 

360 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


begging Tom to come to see her. He wasn’t to mind 
his black eye, because she knew all about it. She was 
tender, consoling. 

“I don’t believe he’s a cad any more than I believe 
that of Lily,” she said, while giving him a cup of tea, 
“but they’re both spoiled with money and a sense of 
self-importance. You see, losing the other child has 
made their mother foolish about them. She’s lavished 
everything on them, more than anyone, not a born 
saint, could stand. It would have been a great deal 
better if they’d had to fight their way—some of 
their way at any rate—like you.” 

“Oh, I’m another breed.” 

“Another figurative breed—yes. As to the breed 
in your blood—” 

“Oh, but, Hildred, you don’t believe that poppy¬ 
cock.” 

Her eyes were on the teapot from which she was 
pouring. “I don’t believe it exactly because I don’t 
know. It only strikes me as being very queer.” 

“Queer in what way?” 

“Oh, in every way. They think so too.” 

“Then why do they seem to hate me so?” 

“I shouldn’t say they did that. They’re afraid of 
you. You disturb them. They’re—what do they call 
it in the Bible?—kicking against the pricks. That’s 
all there is to it. When they’d buried the whole thing 
you come along and make them dig it up again. 
They don’t want to do that. They feel it’s too late. 
You can see for yourself that for Tad and Lily it 
would be awkward. When you’ve been the only two 
children, and such spoiled ones at that, to have an 

361 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


elder brother you didn’t know anything about suddenly 
hoisted over you—” 

“Of course! I understand that.” 

“Mr. Whitelaw feels the same, only he feels it 
differently. He'd accept him, however hard it was.” 

“And Mrs. Whitelaw?” 

“Oh, poor dear, she’s suffered so much that all she 
asks is not to be made to suffer any more. I don’t 
believe it matters to her now whether he’s found or 
not, so long as she isn't tortured.” 

“And does she think I'd torture her?” 

“They haven’t come to that. It isn’t what you 
may do, but what they themselves ought to do that 
troubles them.” 

“I wish if you get a chance you’d tell them that 
they needn’t do anything.” 

“They wouldn’t take my word for it, or yours either. 
It rests with themselves and their own consciences.” 

“A good deal of it rests with me.” 

“Yes, if you were willing to take the first step; 
but since you’re not—” 

They dropped it at that because Mrs. Ansley lilted 
in, greeting Tom with that outward welcome and in¬ 
ward repugnance he had had to learn to swallow. 
He knew exactly where he stood with her. She took 
him as an affliction. Affliction could visit the best 
families and ignore the highest merits. Guy, dear 
boy, was extravagant, and this was the proof of his 
extravagance. He was infatuated with this young 
man, who had neither means, antecedents, nor con¬ 
nections. She had heard the Whitelaw Baby theory, 
of course; but so long as the Whitelaws themselves 

362 



MRS. ANSLEY TOOK HIM AS AN AFFLICTION 







THE HAPPY ISLES 


rejected it, she rejected it too. The best she could do 
was to be philanthropic. Philip, Guy, Hildred, were 
all convinced that this young man was to make his 
mark. Very well! It was in her tradition, it was in 
the whole tradition of old Boston, to help those who 
were likely to get on. It was part of what you owed 
to your standing in the world, a kind of public duty. 
You couldn’t slight it any more than royalty can 
slight the opening of bazaars. An aunt of her own 
had helped a poor girl to take singing lessons; and 
the girl became one of the great prima donnas of the 
world. Whenever she sang in opera in Boston it was 
always a satisfaction to the family to exhibit her as 
their protegee. So it might one day be with this 
young man. She hoped so, she was sure. She didn’t 
like him; she thought the fuss made over him by 
Hildred and Guy, more or less abetted by their father, 
an absurdity; but since she was obliged to play up to 
the family standard of beneficence, up to it she would 
play. She bore with Tom, therefore, wisely and 
patiently, never snubbing him except when they 
chanced to be alone, and hurting him only as a jelly¬ 
fish hurts a swimmer, by clamminess of contact. 

Clamminess of contact being in itself a weapon of 
offense, Tom ran away from it, but only to fall into 
contact of another kind. 

It was a cloudy afternoon with Christmas in the 
near future. All over town there were notes of 
Christmas, in the shop windows, in the Christmas 
trees exposed for sale, in the way people ran about 
with parcels. He never approached this season with¬ 
out going back to that fatal Christmas Eve when he 

363 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


and his mother had been caught shoplifting. He 
could still feel as he felt at the minute when he turned 
his face to the angle of the police-station wall, and 
wept silently. He wondered what Hildred would 
think of him if he were to tell her that tale. He won¬ 
dered if he ever should. 

Partly for the exercise, partly to find space to 
breathe and to think, he followed the Boston embank¬ 
ment of the Charles, making his way to the Harvard 
Bridge, and so toward Cambridge. In big quietly 
dropping flakes it had begun to snow. Presently it 
was snowing faster. The few pedestrians fled from 
the esplanade. He tramped on alone, enjoying the 
solitude. 

The embankment lamps had been lit when he 
noticed, coming toward him, two young men, their 
collars turned up about their ears. They were laugh¬ 
ing and smoking cigarettes. Drawing nearer, he 
recognized them as Tad Whitelaw and the fellow who 
had slapped the table at the dance. It was not hard 
to guess that they were on their way to see Hildred. 
He hoped that under cover of the darkness and the 
snow he might slip by unobserved. 

But Tad stopped squarely in front of him. “Let’s 
look at your eye.” 

The tone was so easy and friendly that Tom thought 
he might be going to apologize. He let him look. 

“Well, you got that,” Tad went on. “Another 
time you’ll get worse. By God, if you don’t keep 
away from me I'll shoot you.” 

Tom was surprised, but it was the sort of situation 

364 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


in which he could be cool. He smiled into the arro¬ 
gant young face turned up toward his. 

“What’s the good of that line of talk? You know 
you wouldn’t shoot me; you wouldn’t have the nerve. 
Besides, you haven’t anything to shoot me for. I’ll 
leave it to this fellow.” He turned to Tad’s com¬ 
panion, who stood as a spectator, slightly to one side. 
“I found him dead drunk the other night. I took him 
home in a taxi, and put him to bed. That’s no more 
than the common freemasonry among men. Any man 
would do the same at a pinch for any other man.” 

The companion played up nobly. “That’s the 
straight dope, Tad. Take it and gulp it down. This 
guy is a good guy or he wouldn’t have—” 

“Go to hell,” Tad interrupted, insolently. “I’m 
only warning him. If he hangs round me any 
more—” 

Tom kept his temper by main force, addressing 
himself still to the companion. 

“I’ve never hung round him. He knows I haven’t. 
Two or three times I’ve run into him, as I’ve done 
to-day. Twice I’ve stepped in, to keep him from get¬ 
ting the gate, this time as a drunk, the other time as a 
damn fool. I’d do that for anyone. I’d do it for 
him, if I found him in the same mess again.” 

“That’s fair enough, Tad,” the referee approved. 
“You can’t kick against it.” 

Tad tried to speak, but Tom went on with quiet 
authority. 

“So that since he likes warnings he can take that 
one. I shan’t let him be chucked out of Harvard if 
I can help it.” 


363 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Tad sprang. “The devil you won’t!” 

Tom continued to speak only to the third party. 
“No, the devil I won’t! I don’t know why I feel that 
way about him, but that’s the way I feel. And any¬ 
how, now he knows.” 

Still addressing the companion only, he uttered a 
curt “Good-night.” The companion responded civilly 
with “Good-night” on his side. 

He neither looked at Tad, nor flung a word at him. 
Wheeling to face what had now blown into a snow¬ 
storm, he walked off into its teeth. But as he went he 
repeated the question he had put to Hildred Ansley. 

“Why do they seem to hate me so?” 

He thought of Lily, slippery, snake-like, perverted; 
he thought of the mother as he had seen her on that 
one day, in that one glimpse, a quivering bundle of 
agony; he thought of the father, human, sympathetic, 
with the iron in his soul. 

Then he saw them with their heaped up money, 
their luxuries, their pride, their domineering self- 
importance. He knew just enough of the lives they 
led, the exemptions they enjoyed, to feel Honey’s 
protest on behalf of the dispossessed. 

Near an arc-light he stopped abruptly. The snow 
made a tabernacle for him, so that he was all alone. 
As he looked upward and outward millions and mil¬ 
lions of sweet soft white things flew silently across 
the light. Out of his heart, up to his lips, there tore 
the kind of prayer which in times of temptation the 
Tollivant habit sometimes wrung from him: 

“O God, keep me from ever wanting to be one of 
them!” 


366 


XXXIX 


I N January, 1917, it began to occur to Tom White- 
law that he might have to go and fight. He 
might possibly be killed. Worse than that, he might 
be crippled or blinded or otherwise rendered help¬ 
less. 

He had followed the war hitherto as one who 
looks on at tragedies which have nothing to do with 
himself. Europe was to him no more than a geo¬ 
graphical term. Intense where his own aims and 
duties were concerned, but lacking the imaginative 
faculty, he had never been able to take England, 
France, and Germany as realities. The horrors of 
which he read in newspapers moved him less than a 
big human story on the stage. That the struggle 
might suck him into itself, smashing him as a tor¬ 
nado smashes a tree, came home to him first at a 
Sunday evening supper with the Ansleys. 

“If it does come,” Philip Ansley said, compla¬ 
cently, “a lot of you young fellows will have to go 
and be shot up.” 

“I’m on,” Guy announced readily. “If it hadn’t 
been for the family I’d have enlisted in Canada long 
ago.” 

His mother took this seriously. “Well that, thank 
God, can’t happen to us. Darling, with your—” 
“Oh, yes, with my fat! Same old bunk! But, 

367' 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


mother, I’m losing weight like a snowbank in April. 
It's running away. I’m exercising; I’m taking 
Turkish baths; I don’t hardly eat a damn thing. I 
weighed two-fifty-three six weeks ago, and now Pm 
down to two-forty-nine.” 

“Don’t worry,” his father assured him. “You’ll 
get there. You’ll make a fine target for Big Bertha. 
Couldn’t miss you any more than she would a whole 
platoon.” 

“Philip, how can you!” 

“Oh, they’re all crazy to go.” He looked toward 
Tom. “Suppose you are too. Exactly the big 
husky type they like to blow into hash.” 

Turning to help himself from the dish Pilcher 
happened to be passing, Tom’s eyes encountered 
Mildred’s. Seated beside him, she had veered round 
on hearing her father’s words. The alarm in her 
face was a confession. 

“Oh, I can wait,” he tried to laugh. “If I’ve got 
to go I will, but I’m not tumbling over myself to 
get there.” 

A half hour later Mrs. Ansley and the three 
younger members of the party were in the music 
room, where Guy was at the piano. The mother sat 
on a gilded French canape, making an excuse for 
keeping Hildred beside her. Tom had already begun 
to guess that the friendship between Hildred and 
himself was making Mrs. Ansley uneasy. For all 
these years she had taken him as Guy’s protege with 
whom “anything of that kind” was impossible. But 
lately she had so maneuvered as not to leave Hildred 
and himself alone. Whether Hildred noticed it or 

368 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


not he couldn’t tell, since she never made a counter¬ 
move. If she was not unconscious of her mother’s 
strategy she let it appear as if she was. 

All the while Guy chimed out the Carillon de 
Cythere of Couperin le Grand Mrs. Ansley patted 
Hildred’s hand, and rejoiced in her two children. 
Guy’s touch was velvety because it was Guy’s; 
Couperin le Grand was a noble composer because Guy 
played him. Her amorphous person quivered to the 
measure, with a tremor here and a dilation there, 
like the contraction and expansion of a medusa float¬ 
ing in the sea. 

But when Guy had tinkled out the final notes she 
bubbled to her feet. 

“Darling, I don’t think I ever heard you play as 
well as you’re doing this winter. I think if you were 
to give a private recital . . .” 

In the general movement Tom lost the rest of this 
suggestion, but caught on again at a whisper which 
he overheard. 

“Hildred, I simply must go and take my corsets 
off. I’ve had them on ever since I dressed for church. 
It’s Nellie’s evening out. I’ll have to ask you to come 
and help me.” 

But as her mother was kissing Guy good-night 
Hildred managed to say beneath her breath, “Don’t 
go away. I’ll try to come back. There’s something 
I want to speak about.” 

Left to themselves, the two young men exchanged 
bits of college gossip while Guy twirled on the piano 
stool. They had the more to say to each other since 
they met less often than in their year at Gore Hall. 

369 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Guy was now in Westmorley Court, and Tom in one 
of the cheaper residential halls in the Yard. Their 
associations would have tended to put them apart, had 
not Guy’s need of moral strengthening, to say nothing 
of a dog-like loyalty, driven him back at irregular 
intervals upon his old friend. Now and then, too, 
when his mother insisted on his coming home for the 
Sunday evening meal, Hildred suggested that he bring 
Tom. 

“Let’s hike it in by the Embankment,” was Guy’s 
way of extending this invitation. “I don’t mind if 
you come along, and Hildred likes it. Dad don’t 
care one way or another. He isn’t democratic like 
Hildred and me; but he’s only a snob when it comes to 
his position as one of the grand panjandrums of Bos¬ 
ton. Mother kicks, of course; but then she’d accept 
the devil himself if I was to tote him behind me.” 

Long usage had enabled Tom to translate these 
sentiments into terms of eagerness. Guy really 
wanted him. He was Guy’s haven of refuge as truly 
as when they had been growing boys. Every few 
weeks Guy turned from his “bunch of sports,” or his 
“bunch of sports” left him in the lurch, so that he 
came back like a homing pigeon to its roost. Tom 
was fond of him, was sorry for him, bore with him. 
Moreover, beyond these tactless invitations there was 
Hildred. 

They fell to talking of Tad Whitelaw. Guy swung 
round to the piano, beating out a few bars of throb¬ 
bing, deep-seated grief. 

“One more little song and dance and Tad’ll get 
this. Know what it is?” 

370 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Confessing that he didn’t know, Tom learned that 
it was Handel’s Dead March in “Saul.” 

“Played at all the British military funerals, to 
make people who feel bad enough already feel a 
damn sight worse. Be our morning and evening 
hymn when we get into the trenches.” 

Tom was anxious. “You mean that Tad’s on pro¬ 
bation ?” 

“I don’t what he’s on. Hear the Dean’s been giving 
him a dose of kill-or-cure. That’s all.” He pounded 
out the heartbreaking chords, with the deep bass note 
that sounded like a drum. “Ever see a fellow named 
Thorne Carstairs?” 

“Seen him, yes. Don’t know him. Yale chap, 
isn’t he?” 

“Was.” The drumbeat struck sorrow to the soul. 
“Kicked out. Hanging round Tad till he gets him 
kicked out too. Lives at Tuxedo. Stacks of dough, 
just like Tad himself.” There was some personal 
injury in Guy’s tone, as he added, “Like to give him 
the toe of my boot.” 

It was perhaps this feat of energy that sent him 
into the martial phrases of the Chopin polonaise in 
A major, making the room ring with joyous bravery. 

Having dropped into Mrs. Ansley’s corner of the 
gilded canape, Tom found Hildred silently slipping 
into a seat beside him. 

“No, don’t get up.” She put her hand on his arm 
in a way she had never done before. “I can only stay 
a few minutes. There’s something I want to say.” 

Guy was passing to the D major movement. His 
back was turned to them. They sat gazing at each 

37i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


other. They sat gazing at each other in a new kind of 
avowal. All the things he dared not say and she 
dared not listen to were poured from the one to the 
other through their eyes. She spoke hurriedly, 
breathlessly. 

“I want you to know that if we enter the war, and 
you’re sent over there, I’ll find a way to go too,” 

He began some kind of protest, but she silenced 
him. 

“I know how I could do it. There’s a woman in 
Paris who’d take me on to work with her. You see, 
I’m used to Europe. You’re not, I can’t bear to 
think of you—with no family—so far away from 
everyone—and all alone. I’ll go.” 

Before he could seize anything like the full import 
of what she was telling him she had slipped away 
again. Guy was still playing, martially and majes¬ 
tically. 

Tom sat wrapt in a sudden amazed tranquillity. 
Now that she had told him, told him more, far more, 
than was in her words, he was not surprised; he was 
only reassured. He realized that it was what he had 
expected. He had not expected it in the mind, nor 
precisely with the heart. If the heart has reasons 
which the reason doesn’t know, it was something be¬ 
yond even these. The nearest he could come to it, 
now that he tried to express it by the processes of 
thought, was that between him and her there existed 
a community of life which they had only to take for 
granted. She was taking it for granted. To find out 
if she loved him he would never have to ask her; she 
would never have to ask him. They knew! Pie 

372 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


wondered if the knowledge brought to her the peace it 
brought to him. He felt that he knew that too. 

Having ended his polonaise, Guy let his fingers 
run restlessly up and down the keys. He had not 
turned round; he had heard nothing; he hadn’t 
guessed that Hildred had come and gone. That 
was their secret. They would keep it as a secret. 
One of them at least had no wish to make it known. 

He had no wish that it should go farther, even 
between him and her, till the future had so shaped 
itself that he could be justified. That it should remain 
as it was, unspoken but understood, would for a long, 
long time to come be joy and peace for them both. 

Suddenly Guy broke into a strain enraptured and 
exultant. It flung itself up on the air as easily as a 
bird’s note. It was lyric gladness, welling from a 
heart that couldn’t tire. 

Caught by his own jubilance, Guy took up the 
melody in a tenor growing liquid and strong after the 
years of cracked girlishness. 

“Guy, for heaven’s sake, what’s that?’’ 

The singer cut into his song long enough to call 
back over his shoulder: 

“Schumann! ‘To the Beloved’!’’ 

He began singing again, his head thrown back, his 
big body swaying. All the longing for love of a 
fellow on the edge of twenty, but for him made 
shamefaced by his fat, found voice in that joyous¬ 
ness. 

Tom had not supposed that in the whole round of 
the universe there was such expression for his name¬ 
less ecstasies. It was not Guy whom he heard, nor 

373 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the piano; it was the morning stars singing together; 
it was the sons of God shouting for joy; it was all the 
larks and all the thrushes and all the nightingales 
that in all the ages had ever trilled to the sun and 
moon. 

“Don’t stop,” he shouted, when the song had 
mounted to its close. “Let’s have it all over again.” 

So they had it all over again, the one in his word¬ 
less, mumbled tenor, and the other singing in his 
heart. 


374 


XL 


^VURING the next week or ten days Tom worried 
over Tad Whitelaw. He wondered whether or 
not he ought to go to see the boy. If he didn’t, Tad’s 
Harvard career might end suddenly. If he did, he 
would probably have humiliation for his pains. He 
wouldn’t mind the humiliation if he could do any 
good; but would he? 

One thing that he could do was to take himself to 
task for thinking about the fellow in one way or the 
other. It was the fight he put up from day to day. 
What was Tad Whitelaw to him? Nothing! And 
yet he was much. It was beyond reasoning about. 

He was a responsibility, a care. Tom couldn’t 
help caring; he couldn’t help feeling responsible. If 
Tad went to the bad something in himself would have 
gone to the bad. He might argue against this in¬ 
stinct every minute of the day, yet he couldn’t argue 
it down. 

He remembered that Tad went often to see Hildred. 
He had been on his way to see her that afternoon 
before Christmas when they had met on the esplanade. 
She might be able to get at him more easily than 
anybody else. He rang her up. 

Her life as a debutante was so crowded that she 
found it hard to give him a half hour. “I’m dead 
beat,” she confessed on the wire. “If it weren't for 

375 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


mother I’d call it all off.” She made him a suggestion. 
She was driving that morning to lunch with a girl 
who lived in one of the big places beyond Jamaica 
Pond. If he could be at a certain corner she could 
pick him up. He could drive out with her, and come 
back by the trolley car. Then they could talk. That 
this proposal didn’t meet the wishes of some one near 
the telephone he could judge by the aside which also 
passed over the wire. “He wants to see me about 
Tad, mother. I can’t possibly refuse.” 

Getting into the car beside her, he had another of 
those impressions, now beginning to be rare, of the 
difference between her way of living and all that he 
was used to. Much as he knew about cars, it was the 
first time he had actually driven in a rich woman’s 
limousine. The ease of motion, the cushioned soft¬ 
ness, the beaver rug, the blue-book, the little feminine 
appointments, the sprig of artificial flowers, subdued 
him so that he once more found it hard to believe that 
she took him on a footing of equality. 

But she did. Her indifference to the details which 
overpowered him was part of the wonder of the 
privilege. Having everything to bestow, she seemed 
unaware of bestowing anything. She took for 
granted their community of life. She did it simply 
and without self-consciousness. Had they been 
brother and sister she could not have been easier or 
more matter-of-course in all that she assumed. 

Except for the coming-out ball it was the first time, 
too, that he had seen her as what he called “dressed 
up.” Her costume now was a warm brown velvet 
of a shade which toned in with the gold-brown of her 

376 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


eyes and the nut-brown of her complexion. She wore 
long slender jade earrings, with a string of jade 
beads visible beneath her loosened furs. The furs 
themselves might have been sables, though he was too 
inexperienced to give them a name. Except for the 
jade, she wore, as far as he could see, nothing else 
that was green but a twist of green velvet forming 
the edge of her brown velvet toque. Her neat proud 
head lent itself to toques as being simple and dis¬ 
tinguished. 

He himself was self-conscious and shy. He could 
hardly remember for what purpose she had been will¬ 
ing to pick him up. A queen to her subjects is always 
a queen, a little overwhelming by her presence, no 
matter how human her personality. Now that he was 
before her in his old Harvard clothes, and the marks 
of the common world all over him, he could hardly 
believe, he could not believe, that she had uttered the 
words she had used on Sunday night. 

All the ease of manner was on her side. She went 
straight to the point, competent, businesslike. 

“The thing, it seems to me, that will possibly save 
Tad is that he’s got to keep himself fit in case war 
breaks out.” 

That was her main suggestion. Tad couldn’t afford 
to throw himself away when his country might, within 
a few weeks, have urgent need of him. He couldn’t, 
by ovei indulgence let himself run’ down physically, 
as he couldn’t by neglecting his work put himself 
mentally at a disadvantage. He must be fit. She 
liked the word—fit for his business as a soldier. 

“That’s just what would appeal to him when 

377 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


nothing else might/’ Tom commended. “I wish you’d 
take it up with him.” 

“I will; but you must too.” 

“If I get a chance; but I daresay I shan’t get one.” 

She had a way of asking a leading question without 
emphasis. Any emphasis it got it drew from the long 
oblique regard which gave her the air of a woman 
with more experience than was possible to her years. 

“Why do you care?” 

He had to hedge. “Oh, I don’t know. He’s just 
a fellow. I don’t want to see him turn out a rotter.” 

“If he turned out a rotter would you care more 
than if it was anybody else?” 

“M-m-m ! Perhaps so! I wouldn’t swear to it.” 

“I would. I know you’d care more. And I know 
why.” 

He tried to turn this with a laugh. “You can’t 
know more about me than I do myself.” 

“Oh, can’t I? If I didn’t know more about you 
than you do yourself . . .” 

He decided to come to close quarters. “You mean 
that you do think I’m the lost Whitelaw baby?” 

“I know you are.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Miss Nash told me so, for one thing.” 

“And for another?” 

“For another, I just know it.” 

“On what grounds ?” 

“On no grounds; on all grounds. I don’t care 
anything about the grounds. A woman doesn’t have 
to have grounds—when she knows.” 

378 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

“Well, what about my grounds when I know to the 
contrary?” 

“But you don’t. You only know your history back 
to a certain point.” 

“I’ve only told you my history back to a certain 
point. I know it farther back than that.” 

“How far back?” 

“As far back as anyone can go, from his own 
knowledge.” 

“Oh, from his own knowledge! But some of the 
most important things come before you can have any 
knowledge. You’ve got to take them on trust.” 

“Well, I take them on trust.” 

“From whom?” 

“From my mother.” 

She was surprised. “You remember your mother?” 

“Very clearly.” 

“I didn’t know that. What do you remember 
about her?” 

“I remember a good many things—how she looked 
—the way she talked—the things she did.” 

“What sort of things were they?” 

“That’s what I want to tell you about. It’s what I 
think you ought to know.” 

She allowed her eyes to rest on his calmly. “If you 
think knowing would make any difference to me—” 

“I think it might. It’s what I want to find out.” 

“Then I can tell you now that it wouldn’t.” 

“Oh, but you haven’t heard.” 

“I don’t want to hear, unless you’d rather—” 

“That you did. That’s just what I do. I don’t 
think we can go any farther—I mean with our—” 

379 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the word was difficult to find—“I mean with our— 
friendship—unless you do hear.'’ 

“Oh, very well! I want you to do what’s easiest 
for you, and if it does make a difference I'll tell you 
honestly.” 

“Thank you.” For a second, not more, he laid his 
hand on her muff, the nearest he had ever come to 
touching her. “We were talking about the things my 
mother did. Well, they weren’t good things. The 
only excuse for her was that she did them for me, 
because she was fond of me.” 

“And you were fond of her?” 

“Very; I’m fond of her still. It’s one of the 
reasons—but I must tell you the whole story.” 

He told as much of the story as he thought she 
needed to know. Beginning with the stealing of the 
book from which he had learned to read, he touched 
only the points essential to bringing him to the Christ¬ 
mas Eve which saw the end; but he touched on 
enough. 

“Oh, you poor darling little boy! My heart aches 
for you—all the way back from now.” 

“So you see why I became a State ward. There 
was nothing else to do with me. I hadn’t anybody.” 

“Of course you hadn’t anybody if . . .” 

“If my mother stole me. But you see she didn’t. 
I was her son. I don’t want to be anybody else’s.” 

“Only—” she smiled faintly—“you can’t always 
choose whose son you want to be.” 

“I can choose whose son I don’t want to be. That’s 
as far as I go.” 

“Oh, but still—” She dismissed what she was 

380 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


going to say so as not to drive him to decisions. “At 
any rate we know what to do about Tad, don’t we? 
And you must work as well as I.” 

“I will if he gives me a look-in, but very likely he 
won’t.” 

And yet he got his look-in, or began to get it, no 
later than that very afternoon. 

He had gone to Westmorley Court to give Guy 
a hand with some work he was doing for his mid¬ 
years. On coming out again, a little scene before the 
main door induced him to hang back amid the shadows 
of the hall. 

Thorne Carstairs was there with his machine, a 
touring car that had seen service. In spite of his 
residence in Tuxedo Park, and what Guy had called 
his stacks of dough, he was a seedy, weedy youth, with 
the marks of the cheap sport. Tad was there also, 
insisting on being taken somewhere in the car. Spit 
Castle being on the spot as a witness to a refusal 
accompanied by epithets of primitive significance, 
Tad waxed into a rage. Even to Tom, who knew 
nothing of the cause of the breach, it was clear that 
a breach there was. Tad sprang to the step of the 
car. Thorne Carstairs pushed him off, and made 
spurts at driving away. Before he could swing the 
wheel, Tad was on him like a cat. Curses and maul- 
ings were exchanged without actual blows, when a 
shove from Carstairs sent Tad sprawling backward. 
Before he could recover himself to rush the car again 
its owner had got off. 

There was a roar of laughter from Spit, as well 
as some hoots from spectators who had viewed the 

381 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


scuffle from their windows. Tad's self-esteem was 
hurt. Not only had his intimate friend refused to do 
what he wanted, but he was being laughed at by a 
good part of Westmorley Court. 

He turned to Spit, his face purple. “By God, I’ll 
make that piker pay for this before the afternoon’s 
out.” 

Hatless as he was, without waiting for comment, 
he started off on the run. Where he was running 
nobody knew, and Tom least of all. By the time he 
had reached the street Tad was nowhere to be seen. 

For the rest of the day the incident had no sequel. 
Tom had almost dismissed it from his mind, when 
on the next day, while crossing the Yard, he ran 
into Guy Ansley. 

Guy was brimming over. “Heard the row, haven’t 
you?” 

Tom admitted that he had not. Guy gave him 
the version he had heard, which proved to be the 
correct one. He gave it between fits of laughter and 
that kind of sympathetic clapping on the back which 
can never be withheld from the harum-scarum dare¬ 
devil playing his maddest prank. 

When Tad had run from the door of Westmorley 
Court he had run to the police station. There he had 
laid a charge against an unknown car-thief of running 
off with his machine. He could be caught by tele¬ 
phoning the traffic cops on the long street leading 
from Cambridge to Boston. He gave the number 
of the car which was registered in the State of 
New York. His own name, he said, was Thorne 
Carstairs; his residence, Tuxedo Park; his address 

382 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


in Boston, the Hotel Shawmut, where he was known 
and could be found. Having lodged this complaint, 
and put all the forces of the law into operation, he 
had dodged back to Westmorley Court, had his dinner 
sent in from a restaurant, locked his door against all 
comers, and turned into bed. 

In the morning, according to Guy, there had been 
the devil to pay. As far as Tad was concerned, the 
statement was literally true. Thorne Carstairs had 
been locked in the station all night. Not only had 
he been caught red-handed with a stolen car, but his 
lack of the license he had neglected to carry on his 
person, as well as of registration papers of any kind, 
confirmed the belief in the theft. His look of a cheap 
sport, together with his tendency to use elementary 
epithets, had also told against him. Where another 
young fellow in his plight might have won some 
sympathy he roused resentment by his howlings and 
his oaths. 

“We know you,” he was assured. “Been on the 
look-out for you this spell back. You’re the guy what 
pinched Dr. Pritchard’s car last week, and him with 
a dyin’ woman. Just fit the description—slab-sided, 
cock-eyed, twisted-nosed fella we was told to look for, 
and now we’ve got our claw on you. Sure your 
father’s a gintleman! Sure you live at the Hotel 
Shawmut! But a few months in a hotel of another 
sort’ll give you a pleasant change.” 

In the morning Thorne had been brought before 
the magistrate, where two officials of the Shawmut 
had identified him as their guest. Piece by piece, to 
everyone’s dismay, the fact leaked out that the law 

383 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of the land, the zeal of the police, and the dignity 
of the court had been hoaxed. Thorne himself gave 
the clue to the culprit who had so outraged authority, 
and Tad w r as paying the devil. Guy didn’t know what 
precisely had happened, or if anything definite had 
happened as yet at all; he was only sure that poor 
Tad was getting it where the chicken got the ax. 
He deserved it, true; and yet, hang it all! only a 
genuine sport could have pulled off anything so 
audacious. 

With this Tom agreed. There were spots in Guy’s 
narrative over which he laughed heartily. He con¬ 
demned Tad chiefly for going too far. It was his 
weakness that he didn’t know when he had had enough 
of a good thing. Anyone in his senses might know 
that to hoax a policeman was a crime. A police¬ 
man’s great asset was the respect inspired by his 
uniform. Under his uniform he was a man like any 
other, with the same frailties, the same sneaking 
sympathy with sinners; but dress him up in a blue 
suit with brass buttons on his breast, and you had a 
figure to awe you. If you weren’t awed the fault 
was yours. Yours, too, must be the penalty. The 
saving element was that beneath the brass buttons the 
heart was kindly, as a rule, and humorous, patient, 
generous. Tom had never got over the belief, which 
dated from the night when his mother was arrested, 
of the goodness of policemen. He trusted to it now. 

He was not long in making up his mind. Leaving 
Guy, he cut a lecture to go to see the Dean. He went 
to the Dean’s own house, finding him at home. The 
Dean remembered him as one of tw r o or three young 

384 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


fellows who in the previous year had adjusted a bit 
of friction between the freshmen and the faculty 
without calling on the higher authorities to impose 
their w T ill. He was cordial, therefore, in his welcome. 

He was a big, broad-shouldered Dean, human and 
comprehending, with a twinkle of humor behind his 
round glasses. There was no severity in the tone 
in which he discussed Tad’s escapade; there was only 
reason and justice. Tad had given him a great deal 
of trouble in the eighteen months in which he had 
been at Harvard. He had written to his father more 
than once about the boy, had advised his being given 
less money to spend, and a stricter calling to account 
at home. The father was distressed, had done what 
he could, but the mischief had gone too far. Tad 
was the typical rich man’s son, spoiled by too easy a 
time. He had been so much considered that he never 
considered anybody else. He was swaggering and 
conscienceless. The Dean was of the opinion now 
that nothing but harsh treatment would do him any 
good. 

Tom put in his plea. The matter, as he saw it, was 
bigger than one fellow’s destiny; it involved bigger 
issues. It was his belief that the country would soon 
be at war. If the country was at war, Tad White- 
law’s father would be one of the first of the bankers 
the President would consult. The Dean knew, of 
course, that the bankers would have to swing as much 
of the war as the army and navy. Henry T. White- 
law was a man, as everyone knew, already terribly 
tried by domestic tragedy. You wouldn’t want to add 
to that now, just at the time when he needed to have 

385 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


a mind as free as possible. This boy was the apple 
of his eye; and if disgrace overtook him . . . 

But that was only one thing. Should the country 
go to war, it would call for just such young fellows 
as Tad Whitelaw; fellows of spirit, of daring, of 
physical health and strength. Didn’t the Dean think 
that it might be well to nurse him along for a few 
weeks—it wasn’t likely to be many—so that he could 
answer to the country’s call with at least a nominal 
honorable record, instead of being under a cloud? If 
the Dean did think so, he, Tom, would undertake to 
keep the fellow straight till he was wanted. He 
wasn’t vicious; he was only foolish and headstrong. 
Though he didn’t make a good student, he had in him 
the very stuff to make a soldier. Tom would answer 
for him. He would be his surety. 

In the long run the Dean allowed himself to be 
won by Tom’s own earnestness. He would do what 
he could. At the same time Tom must remember 
that if the college authorities stayed their hand the 
civil authorities might not. The indignation at police 
headquarters was unusually bitter. Unless this right¬ 
eous wrath were pacified . . . 

Having thanked the Dean, Tom ran straight to the 
police station. The Chief of Police received him, 
though not with the Dean’s cordiality. He too was 
a big, broad-shouldered man, but frigid and stern 
through long administration of law, discipline, and 
order. He impressed Tom as a mechanical contriv¬ 
ance which operates as it is built to operate, and with 
no power of showing mercy or making exceptions to a 
rule. Outwardly at least he was grave and obdurate. 

386 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The victory lay once more with Tom’s earnestness. 
The Chief of Police made no secret of the fact that 
they were already considering the grounds on which 
“the crazy fool” could most effectively be prosecuted. 
The law was not, however, wholly without a heart, 
and if in the present instance the country could be 
served, even in the smallest detail, by giving the 
blamed idiot the benefit of clemency it could be done. 
Tom must understand that the nonsense had not been 
overlooked; it was only left in abeyance. If his 
protege got into trouble again he would be the more 
severely dealt with because of the present lenity. 

Tom ran now to Westmorley Court, where he 
knocked at Tad’s door. To a growling invitation he 
went in. The room was a cloud of tobacco smoke, 
through which the shapes of half a dozen fellows 
loomed dimly in the deepening winter twilight. Tad 
tilted back in the revolving chair before the belittered 
desk which held the center of the room. His coat 
was off, his waistcoat unbuttoned, his feet on the 
edge of the desk. A cigar traveled back and forth 
from corner to corner of the handsome, disdainful 
mouth. 

Tom marched straight to the desk, speaking hur¬ 
riedly. “Can I have a word with you in private?” 

The owner of the room neither moved nor took the 
cigar from his lips. “No, you can’t.” He nodded 
toward the door. “You can sprint it out again.” 

“I shall sprint it out when I’m ready. If I can’t 
speak in private I shall speak in public. You’ve got 
to hear.” 

The insolent immobility was maintained. “Didn’t 

387 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


I tell you the last time I saw you that if you ever 
interfered with me again—?” 

“That you’d shoot me, yes. Well, get up and 
shoot. If you can’t, or if you don’t mean to, why 
make the threat? But I’ve come to talk reason. 
You’ve got to listen to reason. If you don’t I’ll appeal 
to these chaps to make you. They don’t want to see 
you a comic valentine any more than I do. Now climb 
down from your high horse and let’s get to business.” 

It was Guy Ansley who cleared the room. “Say, 
fellows—” With a stealthy movement, which their 
host was too preoccupied to observe, they slipped out. 
He knew, however, when he and his enemy were alone, 
and still without lifting his feet from the desk or 
taking the cigar from his mouth, made the concession 
of speaking. 

“Well, if business has brought you here, cough it 
up.” 

“I will. I come first from the Dean, and then from 
the Chief of Police.” 

“Oh, you do, do you? So you’re to be the hang¬ 
man.” 

“No; there’s not to be a hangman. They’ve given 
you a reprieve—because I’ve begged you off.” 

The feet came off the desk. The cigar was taken 
from the lips. Tad leaned forward in his chair, tense 
and incredulous. 

“You’ve done— what?” 

Tom maintained his sang-froid. “I’ve begged you 
off. I went and talked to them both. I said I’d 
answer for you, that you’d stop being a crazy loon, 
and try to be a man.” 


388 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Incredulity passed into angry amazement. “And 
who in hell gave you authority to do that ?” 

“Nobody. I did it on my own. When a fellow 
gets his life as a gift he takes it. He doesn’t kick up 
a row as to who’s given it. For the Lord’s sake, try 
to have a little sense.” 

“What’s it to you whether I’ve got sense or not?” 

“Nothing.” 

“Then why in thunder do you keep butting in—?” 

“Because I choose to. I’ll give you no other 
answer than that, and no other explanation. What 
you’ve got to do is to knuckle under and show that 
you’re worth your keep. You’re not a born fool; 
you’re only a made fool. You’re good for some¬ 
thing better than to be a laughing-stock as you are to 
everyone in college. Buck up! Be a fellow! After 
being a jackass for a year and a half, I should think 
you’d begin to see that there was nothing to it by 
this time.” 

Never in his life had Tad Whitelaw been so ham¬ 
mered without gloves. It was why Tom chose to 
hammer him. Nothing but thrashing, verbal or other¬ 
wise, would startle him out of the conviction of his 
self-importance. Already it was shaking the founda¬ 
tions of his arrogance. In his tone as he retorted 
there was more than a hint of feebleness. 

“What I see and what I don’t see is my own affair.” 

“Oh, no, it isn’t. It’s a class affair. There’s such 
a thing as esprit de corps . We can’t afford to have 
rotters, now especially.” 

Tad grew still feebler. “I’m not the only rotter 
in the bunch. Why do you pick on me ?” 

389 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’ve told you already. Because I choose to. You 
might as well give in to me first as last, because you’ll 
not get rid of me any more than you will of your own 
conscience.” 

Tad sprang to his feet, his eyes flashing, in a new 
outburst. “HI be damned if HI give in to you.” 

“And HI be damned if you don’t. If I can’t bring 
you round by persuasion I’ll do it as I did it once be¬ 
fore. I’ll wale the guts out of you. I'm not going 
to have you a disgrace.” 

“Ah!” Tad started back. “Now I’ve got you. 
A disgrace! You talk as if you were a member of 
the family. That’s what you’re after. That’s what 
you’ve been scheming for ever since—” 

“Look here,” Tom interrupted, forcefully. “Let’s 
understand each other about this business once and 
for all.” Looking from under his eyelids he meas¬ 
ured Tad up and down. “I wouldn’t be a member 
of the family that has produced you for anything the 
world could give me.” 

Tad bounded, changing his note foolishly. “Oh, 
you wouldn’t wouldn’t you! How do you know that 
you won’t damn well have to be?” 

Walking up to him, Tom laid a hand on his shoul¬ 
der, paternally. “Don’t let us talk rot. We both 
know the nickname the fellows have stuck on me in 
Harvard. But what’s that to us? You don’t want 
me. I don’t want you. At least I don’t want you 
that way. I’ll tell you straight. I’ve got a use for 
you. That’s why I keep after you. But it’s got 
nothing to do with your family affairs.” 

They confronted each other, Tad gasping. “You’ve 

390 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


got a use for me? Greatly obliged. But get this. 
I’ve no use for you. Don’t make any mistake—” 

Withdrawing his hand, Tom gave him a little 
shove. “Oh, choke it back. Piffle won’t get you 
anywhere. I’m going to make something of you of 
which your father and mother can be proud.” 

It was almost a scream of fury. “Make something 
of me —?” 

“Yes, a soldier.” 

The word came like a douche of cold water on 
hysteria, calming the boy suddenly. He tapped his 
forehead. “Say, are you balmy up here?” 

“Possibly; but whether I’m balmy or not, a soldier 
is what you’ll have to be. Don’t you read the papers? 
Don’t you hear people talking? Why, man alive, two 
or three months from now every fellow of your age 
and mine will be marching behind a drum.” 

The boy’s haggard face went blank from the sheer 
shock of it. The idea was not brand new, but it was 
incredible. Tad Whitelaw was not one of those who 
took much interest in public affairs or kept pace with 
them. 

“Oh, rot!” 

“It isn’t rot. Can’t you see it for yourself? If 
this country pitches in—” 

“Oh, but it won’t.” 

“Ask anyone. Ask your own father. That’s my 
point. If we do pitch in your father will be one of 
the big men of the two continents. You’re his only 
son. You’ll have to play up to him.” 

Tom watched the hardened, dissipated young face 
contract with a queer kind of gravity. The teeth 

39 r 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


gritted, the lips grew set. It gave him the chance 
to go on. 

“There aren’t a half dozen men in the country who’d 
be able to swing what your father’ll be swinging. Lis¬ 
ter ! I know something about banking. Been study¬ 
ing it for years. When it comes to war the banker 
has to chalk-line every foot of the lot. They can’t do 
anything without him. They can’t have an army or a 
navy or any international teamwork. You’ll see. 
The minute war is declared, before war is declared, 
the President’ll be sending for your father to talk 
over ways and means. Now then, are you to put a 
spoke in the country’s wheel? You can. You’re 
doing it. The more you worry him the less good 
he’ll be. Get chucked out of college, as you would 
have been in a day or two, if I hadn’t stepped in, and 
begged to have you put in my charge—” 

Once more Tad revolted. “Put in your charge! 
The devil I’ll be put in your charge!” 

“All right! It’s the one condition on which you 
stay at Harvard. Jump your bail, and you’ll see 
your father pay for it. He’ll have his big interna¬ 
tional job, and he won’t be able to swing it because 
he’ll be thinking of you. You’ll see the whole coun¬ 
try pay for it. I daresay we shan’t know where we 
pay and how we pay; but we’ll be paying. Say, is it 
worth your while? What do you gain by being the 
rotten spot in the beam that may bring the whole 
shack about our ears? Everybody knows that your 
father has lost one son. Can’t you try to give him 
another of whom he won’t have to be ashamed?” 

Tad stood sulkily, his hands in his trousers’ pockets, 

392 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


as he tipped on his toes and reflected. Since he made 
no answer, Tom went on with his appeal. 

“And that’s not the only thing. There’s yourself. 
You’re not a bad sort. You’ve got the makings of a 
decent chap, even if you aren’t one. You could be 
one easily enough. All you’ve got to do is to drop 
some of your fool acquaintances, cut out drinking, 
cut out women, and make a show of doing what 
you’ve been sent to Harvard to do, even if it’s only a 
show. You won’t have to keep it up for more than a 
few weeks.” 

The furrow in the forehead when the eyebrows 
were lifted was also a mark of dissipation. “More 
than a few weeks ? Why not ?” 

Tom pounded with emphasis. “Because, I tell you, 
we’ll be in the war. You'll be in the war. We fel¬ 
lows of the class of 1919 are not going to walk up on 
Commencement Day and take our degrees. We’ll get 
them before that. We’ll get them in batteries and 
trenches and graves. I heard a girl say, in speaking 
of you a day or two ago, that she hoped, when the 
time came for that, you’d be fit. She said she liked 
the word—fit for the job that’d be given you. You 
couldn’t be fit if you went on—’’ 

His curiosity was touched. “Who was that?” 

“I’m not going to tell you. I’ll only say that she 
likes you, and that—” 

“Was it Hildred Ansley?” 

“Well, if you’re bound to know, it was. If you 
want to talk to someone who wishes you well, go 
and—” 

“Did she put you up to this?” 

393 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“No, she didn’t. You put me up to it yourself. I 
tell you again, I’m going to see you go straight till I 
see you go straight into the army. You ought to go 
in with a commission. But if you're fired out of 
Harvard they’ll be shy of enlisting you as a private. 
If you won’t play the game of your own accord, I’ll 
make you.” 

With hands thrust into his trousers’ pockets, Tad 
began to pace the room, doing a kind of goose-step. 
His compressed lips made little grimaces like those of 
a man forcing himself to decisions hard to swallow. 
For a good four or five minutes Tom watched the 
struggle between his top-loftiness and his common- 
sense. While common-sense insisted on his climbing 
down, top-loftiness told him that he must save his 
face. When he spoke at last his voice was hoarse, 
his throat constricted. 

“If it’s going to be war I’ll be in it with both feet. 
But I’ll do it on my own. See? You mind your 
business, and I’ll mind mine.” 

Tom was reasonable. “That’ll be all right—if you 
mind it.” 

“And if you think I’m giving in to you—” 

“I don’t care a hang whether you’re giving in to 
me or not so long as you —keep fit” 

“I’ll be the judge of that.” 

“And I’ll help you.” 

“You can go to hell.” 

Tad used these words because he had no others. 
They were fine free manly words which begged all 
the questions and helped him to a little dignity. If he 
was surrendering he would do it, in his own phrase, 

394 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


with bells on. The mucker shouldn’t have the satis¬ 
faction of thinking he had done anything. It saved 
the whole situation to tell him in this offhand way the 
place that he could go to. 

But a little thing betrayed him, possibly before he 
saw its significance. His points being won for the 
minute, Tom had reached the door. Beside the door 
stood a low bookcase, on which was open a package of 
cigarettes. Tad’s goose-step brought him within 
reach of it. He picked it up and held it toward Tom. 
He did it carelessly, ungraciously, unthinkingly, and 
yet with all sorts of buried implications in the little 
act. 

“Have one ?” 

Tom was careful to preserve a casual, negligent air 
as he drew one out. Tad struck a match. 

As the one held the thing to his lips and the other 
put the flame to it, the hands of the brothers, for the 
first time except in a fight, touched lightly. 


395 


XLI 


I CAN’T see,” Hildred reasoned, “why you should 
find the idea so terrible.” 

“And I can’t see,” Tom returned, “what it matters 
how I find the idea, so long as nobody is serious about 
it.” 

“Oh, but they will be. It’s what I told you before. 
They’d made up their minds they didn’t want to find 
him; and now it’s hard to unmake them again. But 
they’re coming to it.” 

“I hope they’re not taking the trouble on my 
account.” 

“They’re taking it on their own. Tad as much as 
said so. He said they’d stuck it out as long as they 
could; but they couldn’t stick it out forever.” 

“Stick it out against what?” 

“Against what’s staring them in the face, I sup¬ 
pose.” 

“Did he tell you what I said to him, that nothing 
would induce me to belong to the family that had pro¬ 
duced him?” 

She laughed. “Oh, yes. He told me the whole 
thing, how you’d come into his room, how Guy had 
got the other fellows out, and the pitched battle be¬ 
tween you.” 

“And did he say how it had ended?” 

396 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“He said—if you want to know exactly I’ll tell you 
exactly—he said that when it came to talking about 
the war and the part he would have to play in it, you 
weren’t as big a damn fool as he had thought you.” 

“And did he say how big a damn fool he was 
himself?” 

“He admitted he had been one; but with his father 
on his hands, and the war, and all that, he’d have to 
put the brakes on himself, and pretend to be a good 
boy.” 

Laughing to himself Tom stretched out his legs to 
the blaze of the fire. Hildred had sent for him be¬ 
cause Airs. Ansley was out of the way at her Alothers’ 
Club. There was nothing underhand in this, since 
she would not conceal the fact accomplished. It 
avoided only a preliminary struggle. If she needed 
an excuse, the necessities of their good intentions 
toward Tad would offer it. 

Tea being over, Hildred, who was fond of em¬ 
broidery, had taken up a piece of work. Like many 
women, she found it easier to be daring in an inci¬ 
dental way while stitching. Stitching kept her from 
having to look at Tom as she reverted to the phase of 
the subject from which they had drifted away. 

“The Whitelaws are a perfectly honorable family. 
They may even be called distinguished. I don’t see 
what it is you've got against them.” 

“I’ve got nothing against them. They rather—” 
he sought for a word that would express the queer 
primordial attraction they possessed for him—“they 
rather cast a spell on me. But I don’t want to belong 
to them.” 


397 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“But why not, if it was proved that—?” 

“For one reason, it couldn’t be proved; and for an¬ 
other, it’s too late.” 

The ring in his voice was strange; it made her look 
up at him. “Too late? Why do you say that?” 

“Because it is. You told me some time ago that it 
was what they thought themselves. Even if it were 
proved, it would still be—too late.” 

“I don’t understand you.” 

“I’m not sure that I understand myself. I only 
know that the life I’ve lived would make it impossible 
for me to go and live their life.” 

“Oh, nonsense! Their life is just the same as our 
life.” 

“Well, I’m not sure that I could live yours. I 
could conform to it on the outside. I could talk your 
way and eat your way; but I couldn’t think your way.” 

“When you say my way—” 

“I mean the way of all your class. Mind you, I’m 
not against it. I only feel that somehow—in things 
I can’t explain and wouldn’t know how to remedy— 
it’s wrong.” 

“Oh, but, Tom—” 

“It seems to be necessary that a great many people 
shall go without anything in order that a very few 
people may enjoy everything. That’s as far as I go. 
I don’t draw any conclusions; and I’m certainly not 
going in for any radical theories. Only I can’t think 
it right. I want to be a banker; but even if I am a 
banker—” 

“I see what you mean,” she interrupted, pensively. 
“I often feel that way myself. But, oh, Tom, what 

398 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


can we do about it that—that wouldn’t seem quite 
mad?” 

He smiled ruefully. “I don’t know. But if you 
live long enough—and work hard enough—and think 
straight enough—and don’t do anything to put you off 
your nut—why, some day you may find a way out that 
will be sane.” 

“Yes, but couldn’t you do that and be Harry White- 
law—if you are Harry Whitelaw—at the same time?” 

“Suppose we wait till the question arises? As far 
as I know, no one who belonged to Harry Whitelaw, 
or to whom Harry Whitelaw belonged, has ever 
brought it up.” 

But only a few weeks later this very thing seemed 
about to come to pass. 

It was toward the end of March. On returning to 
his room one morning Tom was startled by a tele¬ 
gram. Telegrams were so rare in his life that merely 
to see one lying on his table gave him a thrill, partly 
of wonder, partly of fear. Opening it, he was still 
more surprised to find it from Philip Ansley. Would 
Tom be in Louisburg Square for reasons of impor¬ 
tance at four that afternoon? 

That something had betrayed himself and Hildred 
would have been his only surmise; only that there was 
nothing to betray. Except for the few hurried words 
Hildred had spoken on that Sunday night, anything 
they had said they had said in looks, and even their 
looks had been guarded and discreet. The things 
most essential to them both were in what they were 
taking for granted. They had exchanged no letters; 
their intercourse was always of the kind that anyone 

399 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


might overhear. Without recourse to explanation 
each recognized the fact that it would be years before 
either of them would be free to speak or to take a step. 
In the meantime their only crime was their confidence 
in each other; and you couldn’t betray that. 

Nevertheless, it was with uneasiness that he rang at 
the door, and asked Pilcher if Mr. Ansley were at 
home. Pilcher was mysterious. Mr. Ansley was not 
at home, but if Mr. Tom would come in he would find 
himself expected. Tea being served in the library, 
Mr. Tom was shown upstairs. 

It was a gloomy afternoon outside; the room was 
dim. All Tom saw at first was a tall man standing on 
the hearth rug, where the fire behind him had almost 
gone out. He had taken a step forward and held out 
his hand before Tom recognized the distinguished 
stranger who had first hailed him in the New Hamp¬ 
shire lake nearly three years earlier. 

“Do you remember me?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

They stood with hands clasped, each gazing into the 
other’s face. Tom would have withdrawn his hand, 
would have receded, but the other held him with a 
grasp both tense and tenacious. The eyes, deep-set 
like Tom’s own, and overhung with bushy outstanding 
eyebrows, studied him with eager penetration. Not 
till that look was satisfied did the tall figure swing to 
someone who was sitting in the shadow. 

“This is the boy, Onora. Look at him.” 

She was sitting out of direct range in a corner of 
the library darkened by buildings standing higher on 
the Hill. The man turned Tom slightly in her direc- 

400 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


tion, where the daylight fell on him. The degree to 
which the woman shrank from seeing him was fur¬ 
ther marked by the fact that she partly hid her face 
behind a big black-feather fan for which there was no 
other use than concealment. She said nothing at all; 
but even in the obscurity Tom could perceive the light 
of two feverish eyes. 

It was the man who took the lead. 

“Won’t you sit down?” 

He placed a chair where the woman could observe 
its occupant, without being drawn of necessity into 
anything that might be said. The man himself drew 
up another chair, on which he sat sidewise in an easy 
posture close to Tom. Tom liked him. He liked his 
face, his voice, his manner, the something friendly and 
sympathetic he recalled from the earlier meetings. 
Whether this were his father or not, he would have 
no difficulty in meeting him at any time on intimate 
and confidential terms. 

“My wife and I wanted to see you,” he began, 
simply, “in order to thank you for what you’ve done 
for Tad.” 

Tom was embarrassed. “Oh, that wasn’t anything. 
I just happened—” 

“The Dean has told me all about it. He says that 
Tad has given him no trouble since. Before that he’d 
given a good deal. I wish I could tell you how grate¬ 
ful we are, especially as things are turning out, with a 
war hanging over us.” 

Tom saw an opportunity of speaking without senti¬ 
ment. “That’s what I thought. It seemed to me a 

401 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


pity that good fighting stuff should be lost just 
through—through too much skylarking.” 

“Yes, it would have been. Tad has good fighting 
stuff.” 

There was a catch of the woman’s breath. Tom 
recalled the staccato nervousness of their first brief 
meeting in Gore Hall. He wished they hadn’t brought 
him there. They were strangers to him; he was a 
stranger t to them. Whatever link might have been 
between him and them in the past, there was no link 
now. It would be a mistake to try to forge one. 

But in on this thought the man broke gently. 

“I wonder if you’d mind telling us all about your¬ 
self that you know? I presume that you understand 
why I’m asking you.” 

“Yes, sir, I do; but I don’t think I can help you 
much.” 

The woman’s voice, vibrating and tragic, startled 
him. It was as if she were speaking to herself, as if 
something were being wrung from her in spite of her 
efforts to keep it back. “The likeness is extraor¬ 
dinary !” 

Taking no notice of this, the man began to question 
him, “Where were you born ?” 

“In the Bronx.” 

He made a note of this answer in a little notebook. 
“And when ?” 

“In 1897.” 

“What date?” 

It was the crucial question, but since he meant to 
tell everything he knew, Tom had no choice but to be 
exact. 


402 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’m not very sure of the date, because my mother 
changed it at three different times. At first my birth¬ 
day used to be on the fifth of March; but afterward 
she said that that had been the birthday of a little 
half-sister of mine who died before I was born.” 

“What was her name?” 

“Grace Coburn.” 

“And her parents’ names?” 

“Thomas and Lucy Coburn.” 

“And after your birthday was changed from the 
fifth of March—?” 

“It was shifted to September, but not for very long. 
Later my mother told me I was born on the tenth of 
May, and we always kept to that.” 

From the woman there was something like a 
smothered cry, but the man only took his notes. 

“The tenth of May, 1897. Did she ever tell you 
why she selected that date?” 

“No, sir.” 

“Did she ever say anything about it, about what 
kind of day it was, or anything at all that you can 
remember ?” 

Tom hesitated. The reflection that the wisest 
course was to make a clean breast of everything im¬ 
pelled him to go on. 

“She only said that it was a day when all the 
nursemaids had had their babies in the Park, and the 
lilacs were in bloom.” 

There followed the question of which he was most 
afraid, because he often put it to himself. 

“Why should she have said that, when, if you were 

403 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


born in the Bronx, she and her baby were miles 
away?” 

“I don’t know, sir.” 

“What was your mother’s maiden name?” 

“I don’t know, sir.” 

“She was married to Thomas Coburn before she 
was married to Theodore Whitelaw, your father ?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Where were she and your father married?” 

“I don’t know, sir.” 

“What do you know about your father?” 

“Nothing at all. I never heard his name till she 
gave it at the police station, the night before she died.” 

“Oh, at the police station! Why there?” 

Tom told the whole story, keeping nothing back. 

The man’s only comment was to say, “And you 
never heard the name of Whitelaw in connection 
with yourself till you heard it on that evening?” 

“Yes, sir, I’d heard it before that.” 

“When and how?” 

“Always when my mother was in a—in a state of 
nerves. You mustn’t forget that she wasn’t exactly in 
her right mind. That was the excuse for what she— 
she did in shops. So, once in so often, she’d say that 
I was never to think that my name was Whitelaw, or 
that she’d stolen me.” 

There was again from the woman a little moaning 
gasp, but the man was outwardly self-possessed. 

“So she said that?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“And have you any explanation why?” 

“I didn’t have then; I’ve worked one out. You see, 

404 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


my name really being Whitelaw, and her mind a little 
unbalanced, she was afraid she might be suspected of 
—your little boy’s case had got so much publicity— 
and she a friendless woman, with no husband or rela¬ 
tions—” 

‘‘So that you don’t think she did—steal you?” 

He answered firmly. “No, sir. I dcn’t.” 

“Why don’t you?” 

“For one thing, I don’t want to.” 

“Oh!” 

It was the woman again. The sound was rather 
queer. You could not have told whether it meant re¬ 
lief or indignation. 

The man’s sad penetrating eyes were bent on him 
sympathetically. “When you say that you don’t want 
to, exactly what do you mean?” 

“I’m not sure that I can say. She was my mother. 
She was good to me. I was fond of her. I never 
knew any other mother. I don’t think I could—” he 
looked over at the woman in the shadow, letting his 
words fall with a certain significant spacing—“know 
—any other—mother—now—and so—” 

Rising, she took a step toward him. He too rose 
so that as she stood looking up at him he stood looking 
down at her. There and then her face was imprinted 
on his memory, a face of suffering, but of suffering 
that had not made her strong. The quivering victim 
of self-pity, she begged to be allowed to forget. She 
had suffered to her limit. She couldn’t suffer any 
more. Everything in her that was raked with the 
harrow protested against this bringing up again of 
an outlived agony. 


405 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Her beautiful eyes, brimming with unspilled tears, 
gazed at him reproachfully. As plainly as eyes could 
tell him anything, they told him that now, when life 
and time had dug between them such a gulf, she didn’t 
want him as her son. She might have to accept him, 
since so many things pointed that way, but it would 
be hard for her. Taking back a little boy would have 
been one thing; taking back a grown man, none of 
whose habits or traditions were the same as theirs, 
would be another. She would do it if it were forced 
on her, but it couldn’t recompense her now for past 
unhappiness. It would be only a new torture, a tor¬ 
ture which, if he hadn’t drifted in among them, she 
might have escaped. 

When swiftly and silently she had left the room the 
man put his hand on Tom’s arm. 

“Sit down again. You mustn’t think that my wife 
doesn’t feel all this. She does. It’s because she does 
that she’s so overwrought.” 

Tom sat down. “Yes, sir, of course!” 

“She’s been through it so often. For a good ten 
years after our child was lost boys used to be brought 
to us to look at every few months. And every time it 
meant a draining of her vitality.” 

“I understand that, sir; and I hope Mrs. Whitelaw 
doesn’t think I’ve come of my own accord.” 

“No, she knows you haven’t. We’ve asked you to 
come because—but I must go back. When my wife 
had been through so much—so many times—and all to 
no purpose—she made me promise—the doctors made 
me promise—that she shouldn’t be called on to face it 

406 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

again. Whenever she had to interview one of these 
claimants—” 

“I’m not a claimant,” Tom put in, hastily. 

“I know you’re not. That’s just it. It’s what 
makes the difference. But whenever she had to do it 
—and decide whether a particular lad was or was not 
her son—it nearly killed her.” 

Tom made an inarticulate murmur of sympathy. 

“The worst times came after we’d turned down 
some boy of whom we hadn’t been quite sure. That 
was as hard for me as it was for her—the fear that 
our little fellow had come back, and we’d sent him 
away. It got to be so impossible to judge. You im¬ 
agined resemblances even when there were none, and 
any child who could speak could be drilled about the 
facts, as we were so well known. It was hell.” 

“It must have been.” 

“Then there were our two other children. It 
wasn’t easy for them. They grew up in an atmos¬ 
phere of expecting the older brother to come back. At 
first it gave them a bit of excitement. But as they 
grew older they resented it. You can understand 
that. A stranger wouldn’t have been welcome. 
Whenever a new clue had to be abandoned they were 
glad. If the boy had been found they’d have given 
him an awful time. That was another worry to my 
wife.” 

“Yes, it would be.” 

“So at last we made up our minds that he was dead. 
It was the only thing to do. Self-protection required 
it. My wife took up her social life again, the life 
she’s fond of and is fitted for. Things went better. 

407 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She didn’t forget, but she grew more normal. In 
spite of the past there were a few things she could still 
enjoy. She’d begun to feel safe; and then—in that 
lake in New Hampshire—I happened to see you.” 

“If I were you, sir, I shouldn't let that disturb 
me.” 

“It does disturb me. When I went back that year 
to our house at Old Westbury and spoke to my wife 
and children about it, they all implored me not to go 
into the thing again.” 

“If I could implore you, too—” 

He shook his head. “It wouldn’t do any good. 
I’ve come to the point where I’ve got to see it through. 
I have all the data you’ve given me—as well as some 
other things. If you’re not—not my son—” He 
rose striding to the fireplace, where he stood pen¬ 
sively, his back to the smouldering fire—“if you're 
not my son, at least we can find out pretty certainly 
whose son you are.” 

Tom also rose, so that they stood face to face. 
“And if you can’t find out pretty certainly whose son 
I am—?” 

“I shall be driven to the conclusion that—” 

He didn’t finish this sentence. Tom didn’t press 
for it. During the silence that followed it occurred 
to him that if there was a war the question might be 
shelved. It was what, he thought, he would work 
for. 

The same idea might have come to the older man, 
for looking up out of his reverie, he said, with no 
context: 

“What do you mean to be?” 

408 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’ve always hoped, sir, to go into a bank. It’s 
what I seem best fitted for.” 

There came into the eyes that same sudden light, 
like the switching on of electricity, which Tom re¬ 
membered from their meeting in the water. 

“I could help you there.” 

“Oh, but it would only be in a small way, sir. I’d 
have to begin as something—” 

“All the same I could help you. I want you to 
promise me this, that when you’re free—either after 
Harvard, or after the war—you’ll come to me before 
you do anything else. Is that a bargain ?” 

To Tom it was the easiest way out. “Yes sir, if 
you like.” 

“Then our hands on it!” 

Their right hands clasped. Once more Tom found 
himself held. The man’s left hand came up and 
rested on his shoulder. The eyes searched him, 
searched him hungrily, with longing. Whether they 
found what they sought or merely gave up seeking 
Tom could hardly tell. He was only pushed away 
with a little weary gesture, while the tall man turned 
once more toward the dying fire. 


409 


XLII 


I N the April of 1920, nearly eighteen months after 
the signing of the Armistice, Tom Whitelaw came 
back to Boston, demobilized. He had crossed a good 
part of Europe almost in a straight line—Brest, Paris, 
Chateau-Thierry, Belleau Wood, Fere-en-Tardennois, 
Reims, Luxembourg, Coblenz—and more or less in 
the same way had come back again. Now, if he had 
been able to forget it all, he would gladly have for¬ 
gotten it. Since it couldn’t be forgotten it inspired 
him with an aim in life. 

More exactly, perhaps, it made definite the aim he 
had been vaguely conscious of already. What he felt 
was not new; it was only more fixed and clear. He 
knew what he meant to do, even though he didn’t see 
how he was to do it. He might never accomplish 
anything; very likely he never would; but at least he 
had a state of mind, and he was not going to be in a 
hurry. If for the ills he saw he was to work out a 
cure, or help to work out a cure, or even dream of 
working out a cure, he must first diagnose the disease; 
and diagnosis would take a good part of his lifetime. 
He was twenty-three, according to his count, but, 
again according to his count he had the seriousness 
of forty. With the advantage of a varied experience 
and an early maturity, he had also that of age. 

His achievements in the war had given him the 
kind of importance interesting to newspapers. They 

410 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


had begun writing him up from the days of the action 
at Belleau Wood. His picture had appeared in their 
Sunday editions as on the staff of General Pershing 
during his visit to the Grand Duchess of Luxem¬ 
bourg. To Tom himself the only satisfaction in this 
was the possible diminishing of the distance between 
him and Hildred Ansley. It would not have been 
the first time in history when war had helped a lover 
out of his obscurity to put him on the level of the 
loved one. To Hildred herself it would make no 
difference; but by her father and mother, especially 
by her mother, a son-in-law who had worn with some 
credit his country's uniform might be pardoned his 
presumption. 

Public approval also brought him one other con¬ 
sideration that meant much to him. The man who 
thought he might be his father wrote to him. He 
wrote to him often. He wrote to him partly as a 
friend might write, partly as a father might write to 
his son. Between the lines it was not difficult to read 
a yearning and sense of comfort. The yearning was 
plainly for assurance; just as plainly the sense of com¬ 
fort lay in the knowledge that somewhere in the world 
there was a heart that beat to the measure of his own. 
It was as if he had written the words: “My two 
acknowledged children are of no help to me; my wife 
is crushed by her sorrow; you and I, even if there is 
no drop of common blood between us, understand 
each other. Whether or not we are father and son, 
we could work together as if we were.” 

The letters were full of a fatherly affection strange 
in view of the slight degree of their acquaintanceship. 

411 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


The man’s heart cleared that obstacle with a bound. 
Tom’s heart cleared it with an equal ease. To be 
needed was the call to which, with his strong infusion 
of the feminine, he never failed to answer instanta¬ 
neously. As readily as the banker divined him, he di¬ 
vined the banker. If there was no fatherhood or son- 
ship in fact there was both sonship and fatherhood in 
essence. 

Whitelaw wrote as if he had been writing to his 
boy for years, with a matter-of-course solicitude, with 
offers of money, with scraps of news. He talked 
freely of the family, as if Tom would care to hear of 
them. A few words in one of his letters showed 
that he knew more than Tom had hitherto supposed. 

“If Tad and Lily have been uncivil to you it was 
not because of personal dislike. In their situation 
some hostility toward the outsider, as they would call 
him, whom they might be forced to acknowledge as 
their older brother must be forgiven as not unnatural.” 

During all the three years of Tom’s soldiering this 
was the only reference to the question that had been 
left suspended^ by the war. Whether or not it would 
ever be taken up again Tom had no idea. He hoped 
it would not be. For him an undetermined situation 
was enough. 

Though during this period Henry Whitelaw was 
frequently in London and Paris they never met. 
When the one proposed that he should use his influ¬ 
ence to get the other leave, Tom thought it wiser to 
stay, as he expressed it, on the job. Only once did 
he ask permission to run up for forty-eight hours to 
Paris, and that was to see Hildred. 


412 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She was then helping to nurse Guy, who, while 
working with the Y.M.C.A., had come down with 
typhoid fever. Convalescent by this time, he would 
sail for America in a month or two, Hildred going 
with him. Tom himself being on the eve of march¬ 
ing into Germany, the moment was one to be seized. 

They dined in a little restaurant near the Made¬ 
leine. With the table between them they scanned 
each other’s faces for the traces left by nearly two 
years of separation. Except that she was tired Tom 
found little change in her. Always lacking in tem¬ 
porary, girlish prettiness, her distinction of line and 
poise was that which the years affect but slowly, and 
experience enhances. He could only say of her that 
she was less the young girl he had last seen in Boston, 
and more the woman of the world who, having seen 
the things that happen as they happen most brutally, 
has grown a little heartsick, and more than a little 
weary. 

“It’s all so futile, Tom. It’s such waste. It should 
never have been asked of the people of the world.” 

His lips had the dim disillusioned smile which had 
taken the place of the radiance of even a year or two 
earlier. 

“What about the war to end war? What about 
making the world safe for democracy?” 

She put up a hand in protest. “Oh, don’t! I 
hate that clap-trap. The salt which was good enough 
to put on birds’ tails is sickening when you see the 
poor creatures lying with their necks wrung. Oh, 
Tom, what can we do about it if we ever get home?” 

“Do about what?” 


4i3 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“About the whole thing, about this poor pitiful, 
pitiable human race that’s got itself into such an 
awful mess?” 

“The human race is a pretty big problem to handle.” 

“Yes, but you don’t think the bigness ought to stop 
us, do you?” 

“Stop us from—?” 

“From trying to keep the world from going on 
with its frightful policy of destruction. Isn’t there 
anyone to show us that you can’t destroy one without 
by that much destroying all; that you can’t make it 
easier for one without by that much making it easier 
for everyone? Are we never going to be anything 
but fools?” 

His dim smile came and went again. “We’ll talk 
about that when I get home. We can’t do it now. 
Even if we could it’s no us trying to reason with a 
w r orld that’^ gone insane. We must let it have time 
to recover. I want to hear about you.” 

She threw herself back in her chair, nervously 
crumbling a bit of bread. “Oh, I’m all right. Never 
better, as far as that goes. I’ve only grown an awful 
coward. Now that the fighting’s over I seem to be 
more afraid than when it was going on. As far as 
pep goes I’m a rag.” 

“It’ll do you good to get home.” 

“Oh, I want to get farther away than home. I 
want to get somewhere—to a desert island perhaps— 
where there won’t be any people—” 

“None?” 

“Oh, well, dad and mother and Guy and—” 

“And nobody else ?” 


414 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Yes, and you. I see you want me to say it, so I 
might as well. I want you there—and then nobody 
else—not a soul—not the shadow of a soul—except 
servants, of course—’’ 

He grew daring as he had never been before. “Per¬ 
haps before many years we may find that island—with 
the servants all the time—but with your father and 
mother and Guy as visitors—very frequent visitors— 
but—” 

“Oh, don’t talk about it. It’s too heavenly for a 
world like this.” She looked him in the eyes, despair¬ 
ingly. “Do you suppose it ever could come true?” 

“Stranger things have.” 

“But better things haven’t.” 

He put down his knife and fork to gaze at her. 
“Hildred, do you really feel like that?” 

“Well, don’t you ?” Her tone was a little indignant. 
“If you don’t for pity’s sake tell me, so that I shan’t 
go on giving myself away.” 

“Of course, I feel that way, only it seems to me 
queer that you should.” 

“Why queer?” 

“Because you’re you, and I'm only me.” 

“You can’t reason in that way. You can’t really 
reason about the thing at all. The most freakish 
thing in the world is whom people’ll fall in love with.” 

“It must be,” he said humbly. 

“Oh, cheer up; it isn’t as bad as all that. There’s 
no disgrace in my being in love with you. If you’ll 
just be in love with me I’ll take care of myself.” 

They laughed like children. To neither was it 
strange to have taken their love for granted, since 

4H 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


they had done it for so long. It was as if it had 
grown with them, as if it had been born with them. 
Its flowers had opened because it was their spring¬ 
time; there was nothing else for it to do. It was a 
stormy springtime, with only the rarest bursts of 
sunshine; but for that very reason they must make the 
most of such sunshine as there was. They had not 
met for two years; it might be two years more before 
they met again. They could only throw their hearts 
wide open. 

She talked of her work. In her mood of reaction 
it seemed to her now a stupid, foolish work, not be¬ 
cause it hadn't done good, but because it had done 
good for such useless purposes. A New York woman 
whom she knew, whose son had been killed fighting 
with the British in the earlier part of the war, had 
opened a sort of club for the cheering up of young 
fellows passing through Paris, or there for a short 
leave. 

“We bucked them up so that they’d be willing to 
go back again, and be blown to bits. It was like 
giving the good breakfast and the cigarette to the 
man going out to the electric chair. My God, what 
a nerve we had, we girls! We’d laugh and dance with 
those poor young chaps, who a few days later would 
be in their graves, if the shells left anything to bury. 
We didn’t think much about it then. It’s only now 
that it comes over me. I feel as if I’d been their 
executioner.” 

“You’re tired. You need a rest.” 

“Rest won’t reconcile me to belonging to a race of 
wild beasts. Oh, Tom, couldn’t we make a little life 

416 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


for ourselves away from everyone, and from all this 
cheap vindictiveness? I shouldn’t care how humble 
or obscure it was.” 

He laughed, quietly. “There are a good many 
hurdles to take before we come even to the humble 
and obscure.” 

“Hurdles ? What kind of hurdles ?” 

“Your father and mother for one.” 

She admitted the importance of this. “But you 
won’t find that hurdle hard to take if you’re Harry 
Whitelaw.” 

“But if I’m not?” 

“I’m sure from what mother writes that you can 
be.” 

“And I’m sure from what I feel that I can’t.” 

“Oh, but you haven’t tried.” She hurried on from 
this to give him the gist of her mother’s letters on the 
subject. “She and Mr. Whitelaw have the most 
tremendous confabs about you, every time he comes 
to Boston. The fact that he can’t talk to Mrs. White- 
law—she's all nerves the minute you’re mentioned— 
throws him back on mother. That flatters the dear 
old lady like anything. She begins to think now she 
adopted you in infancy. You were her discovery. 
She gave you your first leg-up. And after all, you 
know, we’ve got to admit that during the whole of 
these seven years she might have been a great deal 
worse.” 

He agreed with her gratefully. 

“As a matter of fact,” she went on, in her judicial 
tone, “you must hand it to us Boston people that, 
while we can be the most awful snobs, we’re not such 

417 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


snobs that we don’t know a good thing when we see 
it. It’s only the second-cut among us, those who don’t 
really belong, who are supercilious. Once you con¬ 
cede that we’re as superior as we think ourselves, we 
can be pretty generous. If you’ve got it in you to 
climb up we not only won’t kick you down, but we’ll 
put out our hands and pull you. That’s Boston; 
that’s dad and mother. When you’ve made all the 
fun of them you like, the poor dears still have that 
much left which you can’t take away from them.” 

Something of this Tom was to test by the time he 
and Hildred met again. It was not another two 
years before they did that, but it was a year. De¬ 
mobilized in Washington, he traveled straight to 
Boston. He had made his plans. Before seeing Hil¬ 
dred again he would see her father. “It’s the only 
straight thing to do,” he told himself. After all the 
years in which they had been good to him he couldn’t 
begin again to go in and out of their house while 
they were ignorant of what he hoped for. Hildred 
might have told them something; he didn’t know; but 
the details of most importance were those which only 
he himself could give them. 

Having written for a very private appointment, 
Ansley had told him to come to his office immediately 
on his arrival in Boston. He reached that city by 
half-past three; he was at the office by a little after 
four. 

It was a large office, covering most of a floor of an 
imposing office building. On a glass door were the 
names of the partners, that of Philip Ansley standing 
first on the list and in bigger letters than the rest. In 

418 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the anteroom an impersonal young lady reading a 
magazine said, by telephone, “Mr. Whitelaw to see 
Mr. Ansley.” 

The business of the day was over. As Tom passed 
through a corridor from which most of the private 
offices opened he saw that they were empty. The only 
one still occupied was at the most distant end, and 
there he found Philip Ansley. He found also his 
wife. The purpose of Tom’s visit having been made 
clear by letter, both of Hildred’s parents were con¬ 
cerned in it. 

They welcomed him cordially, making the comments 
permissible to old friends on his improved personal 
appearance. They asked for his news; they gave 
their own. Guy was back at Harvard at the Law 
School; Hildred was at home, somewhat at loose 
ends. Like most girls who had worked in France, 
she found a life of leisure tedious. 

“Eating her head off,” Ansley complained. “Cant 
settle down again.” 

Mrs. Ansley was more heroic. “We accept it. It’s 
part of what we offered up to the Great Cause. We 
gave our all, and though all was not taken from us we 
should not have murmured if it had been.” 

Taking advantage of this turn of the talk, Tom 
launched into his appeal. For the last time in his 
life, as he hoped, he told the story of his mother. As 
he had told it to Hildred and to Henry Whitelaw so 
now he gave it to Philip and Sunshine Ansley. Hat¬ 
ing the task, he was upheld in carrying it through by 
the knowledge that everyone who had a right to know 
it knew it now. 


419 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He finished with the minute at which Guy first 
spoke to him. From that point onward they had been 
able to follow the course of his life for themselves. 
They had in a measure entered into it, and helped him 
to his opportunities. He thanked them; but before 
he could accept their goodwill again he wanted them 
to know exactly what he had sprung from. Hildred 
did know. She had known it for several years. It 
had made no difference to her; he hoped so to make 
good in the future that it would make no difference to 
them. 

They listened attentively, with no sign of being 
shocked. Now and then, at such points as the stealing 
of the first little book, or the final arrest, one or the 
other would murmur a “Dear me!” but sympathy and 
pity were plainly their sentiments. They didn’t con¬ 
demn him; they didn’t even blame him. He had been 
an unfortunate child. There was nothing to be 
thought of him but that. 

After he had finished there was a silence that 
seemed long. Ansley sat at his desk, leaning back in 
his revolving chair. Mrs. Ansley was near a window, 
where she could to some extent shield herself by look¬ 
ing out. She left to her husband the duty of speaking 
the first word. 

“It all depends, my dear fellow, on your being ac¬ 
cepted by Henry Whitelaw as his son.” 

There was another silence. “Is that final, sir?” 

“I’m afraid it is.” 

“Is there no way by which I can be taken as my¬ 
self?” 

Mrs. Ansley turned from her contemplation of the 

420 


) 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Lion and the Unicorn on the Old State House. “No 
one is ever taken as himself. We all have to be taken 
with the circumstances that surround us.” 

Ansley enlarged on this, leaning forward and toy¬ 
ing with a paperweight. “My wife is quite right. 
Nobody in the world is just a human being pure and 
simple. He’s a human being plus the conditions 
which go to make him up. You can’t separate the 
conditions from the man, nor the man from the con¬ 
ditions. If you’re Henry Whitelaw’s son, stolen and 
brought up in circumstances no matter how poor and 
criminal, you’re one person; if you’re the son of this— 
this woman, whom I shan’t condemn any more than I 
can help, you’re another. You see that, don’t you?” 

“Can’t I be—what I’ve made myself?” 

“You can’t make yourself anything but what you’ve 
been from the beginning. You can correct and im¬ 
prove and modify; but you can’t change.” 

“So that if I’m the son of—of this woman, you 
wouldn’t want me. Is that it?” 

“How could we?” came from Mrs. Ansley. “But 
I know from Mr. Whitelaw himself that—” 

Ansley smiled, paternally. “Suppose we leave it 
there. After all, the last word rests with him.” 

“I don’t think so, sir. It rests with me.” 

This could be dismissed as of no importance. “Oh, 
with you, of course, in a certain sense. They can’t 
force you. But if they’re satisfied that you’re—” 

“And if I’m not satisfied?” 

“Oh, but, my dear fellow, you wouldn’t make your¬ 
self difficult on that score.” 


421 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“It’s not a question of being difficult; it’s one of 
what I can do.” 

They got no farther than that. Tom’s reluctance 
to deny the woman he had always regarded as his 
mother was not only hard for them to seize, it was 
hard for him to explain. Pie couldn’t make them see 
that the creature who for them was only a common 
shoplifter was for him the source of tender and sacred 
memories. To accuse her of a greater crime than 
theft would be to desecrate the shrine which he him¬ 
self had built of love and pity; but he was unable to 
put it into words, as they were unable to understand 
it. He himself worded it as plainly as he could when, 
rising, he said: 

“So that I must renounce my mother or renounce 
Hildred.” 

Ansley also rose. “That’s not quite the way to 
express it. If she was your mother, there can be no 
question of your renouncing her. But then, too, there 
can be no question of—of Hildred. I’m sure you 
must see.” 

“And if I see, would Hildred also see?” 

Leaving her window, Mrs. Ansley, bulbous and 
quivering, lilted forward. “We must leave that to 
your sense of honor. In a way we’re in your hands. 
It’s within your power to make us suffer.” 

“I should never do that,” he assured her, hastily. 
“Hildred wouldn’t want me to. After all you’ve done 
for me neither she nor I—” 

“Quite so, my dear fellow, quite so.” Ansley held 
out his hand. “We trust you both. But the situation 
is clear, I think. If you come back to us as Harry 

422 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Whitelaw, you’ll find us eager to welcome you. If 
you don’t, or if you can’t—” 

A wave of the hand, a shrug of the shoulders, ex¬ 
pressing the rest, Tom could only bow himself out. 


423 


XLIII 


/H|N the part of Philip and Sunshine Ansley the 
confidence was such that Hildred was permitted 
to take a walk with Tom before his departure for 
New York. 

“We’re not engaged,” Hildred reported as part of 
her mother’s conditions, “and we can’t be engaged 
unless you’re proved to be Harry Whitelaw. Mother 
thinks you’re going to be. So apparently the ques¬ 
tion in the long run will be as to whether or not you 
want me.” 

“It won’t be that. I’m crazy about you, Hildred, 
more than any fellow ever was before.” 

“And that’s the way I feel about you, Tom. I 
don’t care a bit about the things dad and mother think 
so important. You’re you; you’re not your father or 
your mother, whoever they may have been. I 
shouldn’t love you any the better if you became the 
son of Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. It would only make 
it easier.” 

It was a windy afternoon in April, with the trees 
in new leaf. All along the Fenway the bridal- 
veil made cascades of whiteness whiter than the 
hawthorns. Pansies, tulips, and forget-me-nots 
brightened all the foot-paths. The two tall, supple 
figures bent and laughed in the teeth of the lusty wind. 

Rather it was she who laughed, since she had the 
confidence in life, while he knew only life’s problems. 

424 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He had always known life’s problems, and though 
there had never been a time when he was free from 
them, he never had had one to solve so difficult as 
this. 

“But that’s where the shoe pinches,” he declared, 
“that I’m myself, so much more myself than many 
fellows are; and yet, unless I turn into some one else, 
I shall lose you.” 

She threw back her answer with a kind of radiant 
honesty. “You couldn’t lose me, Tom. I couldn’t 
lose you. We’ve grown together. Nothing can cut 
us asunder. One can’t win out against two people 
who’re as willing to wait as we are.” 

He was not comforted. “Oh, wait! I don’t want 
to wait.” 

“Neither do I; but we’d both rather wait than give 
each other up.” 

“Wait—for how long?” 

“Plow can I tell how long? As long as we have 
to.” 

“Till your father and mother die?” 

“Oh, gracious, no! I’m not killing the poor lambs. 
Till they come round. They’ll come round.” 

“How do you know?” 

“Because fathers and mothers always do. Once 
they see how sad I’ll be—” 

“Oh, you’re going to play that game.” 

She was indignant. “I shan’t play a game. I 
shall be sad. I’m all right now while you’re here; 
but once you’re gone—well, if dad and mother want a 
martyr on their hands they’ll have one. I shan’t be 
putting it on either. I’ll not be able to help myself.” 

425 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’d rather they came around for some other reason 
than to save your life.” 

“I’m not particular about the reason so long as they 
come round. But you see Pm talking as if the worse 
were coming to the worst. As a matter of fact, I 
believe the better is coming to the best.” 

“Which means that you think the Whitelaws . . .” 

“I know they will.” 

“And that I . . 

“Oh, Tom, you’ll be reasonable, won’t you?” 

He was silent. Even Hildred couldn’t see what his 
past had meant to him. A wretched, miserable past" 
from some points of view, at least it was his own. 
It had entered into him and made him. It was as 
hard to take it now as a hideous mistake as it would 
have been to take his breathing or the circulation of 
his blood. 

The farther it drifted behind him the more content 
he was to have known it. Each phase had given him 
something he recognized as an asset. Honey, the 
Quidmores, the Tollivants, Mrs. Crewdson, the 
“mudda,” had all left behind them experiences which 
time was beginning to consecrate. Hildred couldn’t 
understand any more than anybody else what it cost 
him to disclaim them. He often wondered whether, 
had he been born the son of Henry and Eleonora 
Whitelaw, and never been stolen away from them, he 
would have grown to be another Tad. He thought 
it very likely. 

Not that Tad hadn’t justified himself. He had. 
His record in the war had gone far to redeem him. 
He had come through with sacrifice and honor. Hav- 

426 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


ing fought without a scratch for a year and a half, 
he had, on the very morning of the day when the 
Armistice was signed, received a wound which, be¬ 
cause of the infection in his blood, had resulted in 
the loss of his right arm. This maiming, which the 
chance of a few hours would have saved him, he took, 
according to Hildred, with splendid pluck, though also 
with an inclination to be peevish. Lily, so Tom’s let¬ 
ters from Henry Whitelaw had long ago informed 
him, had married a man named Greenshields, had 
had a baby, had been divorced, and again lived at 
home with her parents. 

Tom pondered on the advantages they, Tad and 
Lily, were assumed to have enjoyed and which he 
himself had been denied. Everyone, Hildred in¬ 
cluded, took it for granted that ease and indulgence 
were blessings, and that he had suffered from the 
loss of them. Perhaps he had; but he hadn’t suf¬ 
fered more than Tad and Lily on whom they had been 
lavished. Tad with his maimed body, Lily with her 
maimed life, were not of necessity the product of 
wealth and luxury; but neither did a blasted soul or 
character come of necessity from poverty and hard¬ 
ship, or even from an origin in crime. 

He couldn't explain this to Hildred, partly because 
she didn’t care, partly because he had not the words, 
and mostly because her assumptions were those of 
her society. She would love him just the same 
whether he were the son of a woman who had killed 
herself in jail, or that of a banker known throughout 
the world; but the advantages of being the latter were 

427 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to her beyond argument. So they were to him, ex¬ 
cept that . . . 

Thus with Hildred he came to no conclusions any 
more than with her parents. With her as with them 
it was an object to keep him from making any state¬ 
ment that might seem too decisive. If they left it 
to Henry Whitelaw and himself the scales could but 
dip in one direction. 

And yet when actually face to face with the banker, 
Tom doubted if the subject was going to be raised. 
He had written, reminding Whitelaw of the promise 
he himself had exacted, that on looking for work, 
Tom should apply first of all to him. Like Ansley, 
the banker had made an appointment at his office. 

The office was in the ponderous and somewhat for¬ 
bidding structure which bore the name of Meek and 
Brokenshire in Wall Street. The room into which 
Tom was shown was shabby and unpretentious. 
Square, low-ceiled, lighted by two windows looking 
into yards or courts, its one bit of color lay in the 
green and red of a Turkey rug, threadbare in spots, 
and scuffed into wrinkles. Against the walls were 
heavily carved walnut bookcases, housing books of 
reference. A few worn leather armchairs made a 
rough circle about a wide flat-topped desk, which 
stood in the center of the room. On the desk were 
some valuable knickknacks, paper weights, paper cut¬ 
ters, pen trays, and other odds and ends, evidently 
gifts. A white-marble mantelpiece clumsily sculp¬ 
tured in the style of 1840 was adorned above by the 
lithographed head of the first J. Howard Brokenshire, 
also of 1840, and one of the founders of the firm. 

428 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


For the first few minutes the room was empty. 
Tom stood timidly close to the door through which he 
had come in. The banker entered from a room ad¬ 
joining. 

“Ah, here you are!” 

He crossed the floor rapidly. For a long minute 
Tom found himself held as he had been held before, 
the man’s right hand grasping his, the left hand rest¬ 
ing on his shoulder. There was also the same search¬ 
ing with the eyes, and the same little weary push 
when the eyes had searched enough. 

“Sit down.” 

Tom took the armchair nearest him; the man drew 
up another. He drew it close, with hungry eager¬ 
ness. Tom was apologetic. 

“I must beg your pardon, sir, for asking you to 
see me—” 

“Oh, no, my dear boy. I should have been hurt 
if you hadn’t. I’ve been expecting you ever since 
I read that you’d landed. What made you go to 
Boston before coming here?” 

There was confession in Tom’s smile. “I had to 
see some one.” 

“Was it Hildred Ansley?” 

Tom found himself coloring, and without an an¬ 
swer. 

“Oh, you needn’t tell me. I didn’t mean to em¬ 
barrass you. The Ansleys are very good friends of 
mine. Known them well for years. If it hadn t 
been for them you and I might never have got to¬ 
gether. Now give me some account of yourself. It 

429 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


must be nearly two months since I last heard from 
you.” 

Tom gave such scraps of information as he hadn’t 
told in letters, and thought might be of interest. 
With some use of inner force he nerved himself to 
ask after Mrs. Whitelaw, and “the other members of 
the family,” a phrase which evaded the use of names. 

The banker talked more freely than he had written. 
He talked as to one with whom he could open his 
heart, and not as to an outsider. Mrs. Whitelaw r 
was stronger and calmer, less subject to the paralyz¬ 
ing terrors which had beset her for so long. Tad 
was doing with himself the best he could, but the best 
in the case of a fellow of his age and tastes who had 
lost his right arm was not very good. He could ride 
a little, guiding his horse with his left hand, but he 
couldn’t drive a car, or hunt, or play polo, or use his 
hand for writing. He could hardly dress himself; he 
fed himself only when everything was cut up for 
him. In the course of time he would probably do 
better, but as yet he couldn’t do much. Lily had 
made a mess of things. It was worse than what he 
had told Tom in his letters. She had eloped with 
a worthless fellow, whom he, her father, had for¬ 
bidden her to know, and who wanted nothing but 
her money. It was a sad affair, and had stunned or 
bewildered her. He didn’t like to talk of it, but Tom 
would see for himself. 

He reverted to Tom’s own concerns. “You wrote 
to me about a job.” 

“Yes, sir; but I’m afraid it’s bothering you too 
much.” 


430 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Don’t think that. I’ve got the job.” 

The young man tried to speak, but the other hur¬ 
ried on. 

“I hope you’ll take it, because I’ve been keeping it 
for you ever since I saw you last.” 

Tom’s eyes opened wide. “Over three years?” 

“Oh, there was no hurry. Easy enough to save it. 
I want you to be one of the assistants to my own 
confidential secretary. This will keep you close to 
myself, which is where I want to have you for the 
first year at least. You’ll get the hang of a lot of 
things there, and anything you don’t understand I 
can explain to you. Later, if you want to go into 
the study of banking more scientifically—well, I shall 
be able to direct you.” 

He sat dazzled, speechless. It was the future!— 
Hildred!—happiness!—honor!—the big life!—the 
conquest of the world! He could have them all by 
sitting still, by saying nothing, by letting it be implied 
that he renounced his loyalties, by being passive in 
the hand of this goodwill. He would be a fool, he 
told himself, not to yield to it. Everyone in his 
senses would consider him a fool. The father of the 
Whitelaw baby believed that he had found his child. 
Why not let him believe it? How did he, Tom 
Whitelaw, know that he wasn’t his child? The 
woman who had told him he was never to think so 
was dead and in her grave. Judged by all reason¬ 
able standards, he owed her nothing but a training in 
wicked ways. He would give her up. He would 
admit, tacitly anyhow, even if not in words, that she 

431 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


had stolen him. He would be grateful to this man—• 
and profit by his mistake. 

He began to speak. “I hardly know how to thank 
you, sir, for so much kindness. I only hope—” He 
was trying to find the words in which to express his 
ambition to prove worthy of this trust, but he found 
himself saying something else— “I only hope that 
you’re not doing all this for me because you think 
I’m—I’m your son.” 

Leaning toward him, the banker put his hand on 
his knee. “Suppose we don’t bring that up just yet? 
Suppose we just—go on? As a matter of fact—I’m 
talking to you quite frankly—more frankly than I 
could speak to anyone else in the world—but as a 
matter of fact I—I want some one who’ll—who’ll be 
like a son to me—whether he’s my son or not. I 
wonder if you’re old enough to understand.” 

“I think I am, sir.” 

“I’m rather a lonely man. I’ve got great cares, 
great responsibilities. I can swing them all right. 
There are my partners, fine fellows all of them; there 
are as many friends as I can ask for. But I’ve no¬ 
body who comes—who comes very close to me—as a 
son could come. I’ve thought—I’ve thought it for 
some time past—that—whoever you are—you might 
do that.” 

As he leaned with his hand on Tom’s knee his eyes 
were lower than Tom’s own. Tom looked down into 
them. It was strange to him that this man who held 
so much of the world in his grasp should be speaking 
to him almost pleadingly. His memories filed by 
him with the speed and distinctness of lightning. He 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


was the little boy moving from tenement to tenement; 
he was in the big shop on that Christmas Eve; he 
was walking with his mother in front of the police¬ 
man ; he was watching her go away with the woman 
who was like a Fate; he was staring at the Christmas 
Tree; he was being pelted on his first day at school; 
he was picking strawberries for the Quidmores; he 
was sleeping in the same room with Honey; he was 
acting as chauffeur at the inn-club in Dublin, New 
Hampshire, and picking up this very man at Keene. 
And here they were together, the instinct of the 
father calling to the son, while*the instinct of the son 
was scarcely, if at all, articulate. 

The struggle was between his future and his past. 
“I must be his son,” he cried to himself. But another 
voice cried, “And yet I can’t be.” Aloud he said, 
modestly, “I’m not sure, sir, that I could fill the bill 
for you.” 

“That would be up to me. It isn’t what you can 
do but what I’m looking for that matters in a case 
like this.” He stood up. “I’m sorry I must go back 
to a conference inside, but I shall see you soon again. 
What’s your address in New York?” 

Tom gave him the name of the hotel at which he 
was putting up. Whitelaw had never heard of it. 

“Can’t you do better than that ?” 

“Oh, it isn’t bad, sir. I’m not used to luxury, and 
I manage very well. I’m quite all right.” 

“Is it money?” 

“Only in the sense that everything is money. I’ve 
a little saved—not much—and I like to keep on the 
weather side of it. The man who did more for me 


A 33 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


than anybody else—the ex-burglar I told you about— 
always taught me to be economical.” 

“All the same I don’t like to have you staying in 
a place like that. You must let me—” 

“Oh, no, sir! I’d a great deal rather not.” He 
spoke in some alarm. “I’ve got to be on my own. 
I must be.” 

“Oh, very well!” 

The tone was not precisely cold; it was that of a 
man whose good intentions were sensitive. Tom did 
something which he never had supposed he would 
have dared to do. He went up to this man, and laid 
his hand gently on his arm. Instantly the man’s free 
hand was laid on the one which touched him, wel¬ 
coming the caress. Tom tried to explain himself. 

“It isn’t that I’m not grateful, sir. I hope you 
don’t think that. But—but I’m myself, you see. I’ve 
got to stand on my own feet. I know how to do it. 
I’ve learned. I—I hope you don’t mind.” 

“I want you to do whatever you think best your¬ 
self. You’re the only judge.” They had separated 
now, and the banker held out his hand. “Oh, and by 
the way,” he continued, clinging to Tom’s hand in 
the way he had done on earlier occasions. “My wife 
wants to see you. She told me to ask you if you 
couldn’t go and lunch with her to-morrow.” 

Since there was no escape Tom could only brace 
himself. 

“Very well, sir. It’s kind of Mrs. Whitelaw. I’ll 
go with pleasure. At one o’clock?” 

“At one o’clock.” He picked up a card from the 
desk. “This is our address. You’ll find Mrs. White- 


434 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


law less—less emotional than when you saw her last 
and more—more used to the idea.” 

Without explaining the idea to which she was more 
used, the banker released Tom’s hand with his cus¬ 
tomary little push, as if he had had enough of him, 
hurrying out by the door through which he had 
come in. 


435 


XLIV 


B EFORE turning into bed that night Tom had 
fought to a finish his battle with himself. The 
victory rested, he hoped, with common sense. He 
could no longer doubt that before very long an extra- 
ordinary offer would be made to him. To repulse it 
would be insane. 

“As far as my personal preferences go,” he wrote 
to Hildred, “I would rather remain as I am. Re¬ 
maining as I am would be easier. Em free; Eve no 
one to consider; I know my own way of life, and 
can follow it pretty surely. But Em not adaptable. 
You yourself must often have noticed that my mind 
works stiffly, and that I find it hard to see the other 
fellow’s point of view. Em narrow, solitary, concen¬ 
trated, and self-willed. But as long as Eve no one 
to consult I can get along. 

“To enter a family of which I know nothing of the 
ways or traditions or points of view is going to be 
a tough job. It will be much tougher than if I merely 
married into it. In that case I should be only an 
adjunct to it, whereas in what may happen now I shall 
have to become an integral part of it. I must be as 
a leg instead of as a crutch. I don’t know how I 
shall manage it. 

“Em not easily intimate with anyone. Perhaps 
that’s the reason why, as you say, I haven’t enough 

436 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


of the lover in me. I’m not naturally a lover. I’m 
not naturally a friend. I’m a solitary. A solitude 
a deux, with the servants, as you always like to stipu¬ 
late, is my conception of an earthly paradise. 

“To you the normal of life is a father, a mother, a 
brother, a sister. To me it isn’t. To have a father 
seems abnormal to me, or to have a sister or a brother. 
If I can see myself with a mother it’s because of a 
poignant experience of the kind that burns itself into 
the memory. But I can’t see myself with another 
mother, and that’s what I’ve got to do. Mind you, 
it isn’t a stepmother I must see, nor an adopted 
mother, nor a mother-in-law; it’s a real mother of my 
own flesh and blood. I must see a real brother, a 
real sister. They think that all they have to do is to 
fling their doors open, and that it will be a simple 
thing for me to walk in. But I must fling open some¬ 
thing more tightly sealed than any door ever was—my 
life, my affections, my point of view. They are four, 
and need only make room for one. I’m only one, and 
must make room for four. 

“But I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it for 
a number of reasons which I shall try to give you in 
their order. 

“First, for your sake. You want it. For me that 
is enough. I see your reasons too. It will help us 
with your father and mother, and all our future life. 
So that settles that. 

“Then, I want to conform to what those who care 
anything about me would expect. I don’t want to 
seem a fool. It’s what I should seem if I turned 
such an offer down. Nobody would understand my 

437 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


emotional and sentimental reasons but myself; and 
when it comes to the emotional and sentimental there 
is a pro side as well as a con to the whole situation. 

“Because if I must have a father there’s no one 
whom I could so easily accept as a father as this very 
man. He seems to me like my father; I think I seem 
to him like his son. More than that, he looks like 
my father, and I must look like the kind of son he 
would naturally have. I’m sure he likes me, and I 
know I like him. If I was choosing a father he’s 
the very one I should pick out. 

“Next, and you may be surprised to hear me say 
it, I could do very well with Tad as a brother. That 
he couldn’t do with me is another thing; but there’s 
something about the chap which has bewitched me 
from the day I first laid eyes on him. I haven’t liked 
him exactly; I’ve only felt for him a kind of respon¬ 
sibility. I’ve tried to ignore it, to laugh at it, to 
argue it down; but the thing wouldn’t let me kill it. 
If there’s such a thing as an instinct between those 
of the same flesh and blood I should say that this was 
it. I’ve no doubt that if we come to living in one 
menagerie we shall be the same sort of friends as a 
lion and a tiger—but there it is. 

“The women appall me. I can’t express it other¬ 
wise. With the father I could be a son as affectionate 
as if I’d never left the family. With Tad I could 
establish—I’ve established already—a sort of fighting 
fraternity. To neither the mother nor the daughter 
could I ever be anything, so far as I can see now. 
They wouldn’t let me. They wouldn’t want me. If 
they yield to the extent of admitting me into the 

438 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


family they’ll always bar me from their hearts. The 
limit of my hope is that, since I generally get along 
with those I have to live with, the hostility won’t be 
too obvious. I also have the prospect that when you 
and I are married—and that’s my motive in the whole 
business—I shall get a measure of release.” 

He purchased next morning a pair of gloves and 
an inexpensive walking stick so as to look as nearly 
as might be like the smart young men he saw on the 
pavements of Fifth Avenue. It was not his object 
to be smart; it was to be up to the standard of the 
house at which he was to lunch. 

To reach that house he went on the top of a bus 
like the one on which he had ridden with Honey 
nearly ten years earlier. He did this with intention, 
to make the commemoration. Honey’s suspicions 
and predictions had then seemed absurd; and here 
they were on the eve of being verified. 

He got off at the corner at which, as he remem¬ 
bered, Honey and he had got off on that August 
Sunday afternoon. He crossed the road to see if he 
could recognize the home of the Whitelaw baby as it 
had been pointed out to him. Recognition came 
easily enough because in the whole line of buildings 
it was the only one which stood detached, with a bit 
of lawn on all sides of it. A spacious brownstone 
house, it had the cheery, homey aspect which comes 
from generous proportions, and masses of spring 
flowers, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths, banked in the 
bow-windows. 

Being a little ahead of his time, he walked up the 
street, trying to compose himself and recapture his 

439 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


nerve. The story, first told to him by Honey, and 
repeated in scraps by many others, returned to him. 
Too far away to be noticed by anyone who chanced 
to be looking out, he stood and gazed back at the 
house. If he was really Harry Whitelaw he had been 
born there. The last time he had come forth from it 
he had been carried down those steps by two footmen. 
He had been wheeled across the street and into the 
Park by a nurse in uniform. Within the glades of 
the Park a change had somehow been wrought in his 
destiny, after which there was a blank. He emerged 
from that blank into consciousness sitting on a high 
chair in a kitchen, beating on the table with a spoon, 
and asking the question: “Mudda, id my name 
Gracie, or id it Tom?” The memory was both vague 
and vivid. It was vague because it came out from 
nowhere and vanished into nowhere. It was vivid 
because it linked up with that bewilderment as to his 
identity which haunted his early childhood. The dis¬ 
covery that he was a little boy forced on a woman 
craving for a little girl was the one with which he 
first became aware of himself as a living entity. 

To his present renunciation of that woman he tried 
to shut his mind. There was no help for it. He had 
long kept a veil before this sad holy of holies; he 
would simply hang it up again. He would nail it up, 
he would never loosen it, and still less go behind it. 
What was there would now forever be hidden from 
any sight, even from his own. 

At a minute before one he recrossed the avenue, 
and went down the little slope. In the role of Harry 
Whitelaw which he was trying to assume going up the 

440 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


steps was significant. The long, devious, apparently 
senseless odyssey had brought him back again. It 
was only to himself that the odyssey seemed straight 
and with a purpose. 

The middle-aged man who opened the door raised 
his eyebrows and opened his eyes wide in a flash of 
perturbation. It was only for an instant; in the half 
of a second he was once more the proper stiffened 
image of decorum. And yet as he took from the 
visitor the hat, stick, and gloves, Tom could see that 
the eyes were scanning his face furtively. 

It was a big dim hall, impressive with a few bits 
of ancient massive furniture, and a stairway in an 
alcove, partially hidden by a screen which might have 
been torn from some French cathedral. Tom, who 
had risen to the modest standard of the Ansleys, again 
felt his insufficiency. 

Following the butler, he went down the length of 
the hall toward a door on the right. But a door on 
the left opened stealthily, and stealthily a little figure 
darted forth. 

“So you’ve come! I knew you would! I knew 
I shouldn’t go down to my grave without seeing you 
back in the home from which twenty-three years ago 
you were carried out. I’ve said so to Dadd times 
without number, haven’t I, Dadd?” 

“You have indeed, Miss Nash,” Dadd corroborated, 
“and none of us didn’t believe you.” 

“Dadd was the second footman,” Miss Nash ex¬ 
plained further. “He was one of the two who lifted 
you down that morning. Now he’s the butler; but 
he’s never had my faith.” 


441 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


She glided away again. Dadd threw open a door. 
Tom found himself in a large sunny room, of which 
the bow-window was filled with flowers. 

There was no one there, which was so far a relief. 
It gave him time to collect himself. Except for apart¬ 
ments in museums, or in some chateau he had visited 
in France, he had never been in a room so stately or 
so full of costly beauty. He knew the beauty was 
costly in spite of his lack of experience. 

On the wall opposite the bow-window stretched a 
blue-green Flemish tapestry, with sad-eyed, elongated 
figures crowding on one another within an intricate 
frame of flowers, foliage, and fruits. A white-mar¬ 
ble mantelpiece, bearing in shallow relief three gar¬ 
landed groups of dancing Cupids, supported a clock 
and a pair of candelabra in biscuit de Semes mounted 
in ormolu. Above this hung a full-length eighteenth- 
century lady—Reynolds, Romney, Gainsborough—he 
was only guessing—looking graciously down on a 
cabinet of European porcelains, on another of minia¬ 
tures, and another of old fans. Bronzes were scat¬ 
tered here and there, with bits of iridescent Spanish 
luster, and two or three plaques of Limoges enamel 
intense in color. Since there was room for every¬ 
thing, the profusion was without excess, and not too 
carefully thought out. A work-basket filled with 
sewing materials and knitting stood on a table strewn 
with recent magazines and books. 

He was so long alone that he was growing nervous 
when Lily dropped into the room as if she had hap¬ 
pened there accidentally. She sauntered up to him, 

442 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


however, offering her hand with a long, serpentine 
lifting of the arm, casual and negligent. 

“How-d’ye-do? Mamma’s late. I don’t know 
whether she’s in the house or not. Perhaps she’s 
forgotten. She often does.” She picked up a silver 
box of cigarettes. “Have one?” 

On his declining she lighted one for herself, drop¬ 
ping into a big upright chair and crossing her legs. 
It was the year when young ladies liked to display 
their ankles and calves nearly up to the knee. Lily, 
whose skirt was of unrelieved black, wore violet silk 
stockings, with black slippers which had bright red 
buckles set in paste. Over her shoulders a violet 
scarf, with bright red bars, hung loosely. In sitting, 
her sinuous figure drooped a little forward, the elbow 
of the hand which held the cigarette supported on her 
knee. 

Though she hadn’t asked him to sit down, he took 
a chair of his own accord, waiting for her to speak 
again. When she did so, after an interval of puffing 
out tiny rings of blue smoke, her voice was languid 
and monotonous, and yet with overtones of passionate 
self-will. 

“You’ve been in the army, haven’t you?” 

He said he had been. 

“Did you like it?” 

“I never had time to think as to whether I did or 
not. I just had to stick it out.” 

“Did you ever see Tad over there?” 

“No, I never did.” 

As she was laconic he too would be laconic. She 
didn’t look at him, or show an interest in his per- 

443 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


sonality. If she thought him the brother who after 
long disappearance was coming home again she be¬ 
trayed no hint of the possibility. He might have 
been a chance stranger whom she would never see 
again. Lapses of silence did not embarrass her. 
She sat and smoked. 

He decided to assume the right to ask questions on 
his own side. “You’ve been married since I saw you 
last, haven’t you?” 

“Yes.” She didn’t resent this, apparently, and 
after a long two minutes of silence, added: “and 
divorced.” There was still a noticeable passage of 
time before she continued, in her toneless voice: “I’ve 
a baby too.” 

“Do you like him?” 

A flicker of a smile passed over a profile heavy- 
browed, handsome, and disdainful. “He’s an ugly 
little monster so far.” She had a way of stringing 
out her sentences as after-thoughts. “I daresay he’s 
all right.” 

There followed a pause so long and deep that in 
it you could hear the ticking of the clock. He was 
determined to be as apathetic as herself. She had 
no air of thinking. She scarcely so much as moved. 
Her stillness suggested the torrid, brooding calm 
before volcanic or seismic convulsion. Without a 
turning of the head or a change in her languid intona¬ 
tion, she said, casually: 

“You’re our lost brother, aren’t you?” 

The emotion from which she was so free almost 
strangled him. He could barely breathe the words, 
“Would you care if I were?” 

444 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“What would be the use of my caring if papa was 
satisfied ?” 

“Still, I should think, that one way or the other, 
you might care.” 

To this challenge she made no response. She was 
not hostile in any active sense; he was sure of that. 
She impressed him rather as exhausted after terrific 
scenes of passion, waywardness, and disillusion. A 
little rest, and she would be ready for the same again, 
with himself perhaps to take the consequence. 

Mrs. Whitelaw came in with the rapid step and 
breathless, syncopated utterance he remembered. 

“So sorry to be late. Pd been for a long drive. 
I wanted to think. I had no idea what time it was. 
I suppose you must be hungry.” 

She gave him her hand without looking him in the 
face, helped over the effort of the meeting by the 
phrases of excuse. 

“So this is my mother!” 

It was his single thought. In the attempt to realize 
the fact he had ceased to be troubled or embarrassed. 
He could only look. He could only wonder if he 
would ever be able to make himself believe that which 
he did not believe. He repeated to himself what he 
had already written to Iiildred: he could believe the 
man to be his father; but that this woman was his 
mother he rejected as an impossibility. 

Not that there was anything about her displeasing 
or unsympathetic. On the contrary, she had been 
beautiful, and still had a lovely distinction. Features 
that must always have been soft and appealing had 
gained by the pathos of her tragedy, while a skin that 

445 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


could never have been anything but delicate and ex¬ 
quisite was kept exquisite and delicate by massage 
and cosmetics. Veils protected it from the sun and 
air; gauntlets, easy to pull on and off, preserved the 
tenderness of hands wearing many jeweled rings, but 
a little too dimpling and pudgy. The eyes, limpid, 
large, and gray with the lucent gray of moonstones, 
had lids of the texture of white rose petals just be¬ 
ginning to shrivel up and show little bistre stains. 
The lashes were long, dark, and curling like those of 
a young girl. Tom couldn’t see the color of her hair 
because she wore a motoring hat, with a sweeping 
brown veil draped over it and hanging down the back. 
Heather-brown, with a purplish mixture, was the 
Harris tweed of her coat and skirt. The blouse of 
a silky stuff, was brown, with blue and rose lights in 
it when she moved. A row of great pearls went 
round her neck, while the rest of the string, which 
was probably long, disappeared within the corsage. 

Dadd appeared on the threshold, announcing lunch. 

“Come on,” Mrs. Whitelaw commanded, and Lily 
rose listlessly. “Is Tad to be at home?” 

Lily dragged her frail person in the wake of her 
mother. “I don’t know anything about him.” 

Tom followed Lily, since it seemed the only thing 
to do, crossing the hall and passing through the door 
by which Miss Nash had darted out to speak to him. 

The dining room, on the north side of the house, 
was vast, sunless, and somber. Tom was vaguely 
aware of the gleam of rich pieces of silver, of the 
carving of high-backed chairs as majestic as thrones. 
One of these thrones Dadd drew out for Mrs. White- 

446 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


law; a footman drew out a second for Lily; another 
footman a third for himself. 

“Sit there, will you?” Mrs. Whitelaw said, in her 
offhand, breathless way, as if speaking caused her 
pain. “This room is chilly.” 

She pulled her coat about her, though the room had 
the temperature suited to the great plant of Cattleya, 
on which there might have been thirty blooms, which 
stood in the center of the table. With rapid, nervous 
movements she picked up a spoon and tasted the 
grapefruit before her. A taste, and she pushed it 
away, nervously, rapidly. Nervously, rapidly, she 
glanced at Tom, glancing off somewhere else as if 
the sight of him hurt her eyes. 

“How long have you been back?” 

He gave her the dates and places connected with 
his recent movements. 

“Did you like it over there?” 

He made the reply he had given to Lily. 

“Were you ever wounded?” 

He said he had once received a bad cut on the 
shoulder which had kept him a month in hospital, 
but otherwise he had not suffered. 

“Tad’s lost his right arm. Did you know that?” 

He had first got this news from Guy Ansley. He 
was very sorry. At the same time, when others had 
been so horribly mangled, it was something to escape 
with only the loss of a right arm. 

She gave him another of her hurried, unwilling 
glances. “How did you come to know the Ansleys 
so well?” 


447 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He told the story of his early meetings with the 
fat boy on the sidewalk of Louisburg Square. 

“Wasn't it awful living with that burglar?” 

Tom smiled. “No. It seemed natural enough. 
He was a very kind burglar. I owe him everything.” 

To Tom’s big appetite the lunch was frugal, but 
it was ceremonious. He was oppressed by it. That 
three strong men should be needed to bring them the 
little they had to eat and drink struck him as ridicu¬ 
lous. And this was his father's house. This was 
what he should come to take as a matter of course. 
He would get up every morning to eat a breakfast 
served with this magnificence. He would sit every 
day on one of these thrones, like an apostle in the 
Apocalypse. He thought of breakfasts in the tene¬ 
ments, at the Tollivants’, at the Quidmores’, or with 
Honey in the grimy eating-places where they took 
their meals, and knew for the first time in many years 
a pang something like that of homesickness. 

It was not altogether the ceremony against which 
he was rebellious. It had elements of beauty which 
couldn’t be decried. What he felt was the old ache 
on behalf of the millions of people who had to go 
without, in order that the few might possess so much. 
It was the world's big wrong, and he didn’t know 
what caused it. His economic studies, taken with a 
view to helping him in the banking profession, had 
convinced him that nobody knew what caused it, and 
that the cures proposed were worse than the disease. 
Without thinking much of it actively, it was always 
in the back of his mind that he must work to eliminate 
this fundamental ill. Sitting and eating commonplace 

448 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


food in this useless solemn stateliness, the conviction 
forced itself home. Somewhere and somehow the 
world must find a means between too much and too 
little, or mankind would be driven to commit suicide. 

During the meal, which was brief, Lily scarcely 
spoke. As they recrossed the hall to go back to the 
big sunny room, she sloped away to some other part 
of the house. Tom and his mother sat down to¬ 
gether, embarrassed if not distressed. 

Pointing to the box of cigarettes, she said, tersely, 
“Smoke, if you like.” 

In the hope of feeling more at ease he smoked. 
Still wearing her hat and coat, she drew her chair 
close to the fire, which had been lighted while they 
were at lunch, holding her hands to the blaze. 

“Do you think you’re our son?” 

The question was shot out in the toneless voice 
common to Lily and herself, except that with the 
mother there was the staccato catch of breathlessness 
between the words. 

Tom was on his guard. “Do you?” 

Turning slightly she glanced at him, quickly glanc¬ 
ing away. “You look as if you were.” 

“But looks can be an accident.” 

“Then there’s the name.” 

“That doesn’t prove anything.” 

“And my husband knows a lot of other things. 
He’ll tell you himself what they are.” 

He repeated the question he had put to Lily, 
“Would you care if I were your son?” 

Making no immediate response, she evaded the 

449 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


question when she spoke. “If you were, you’d have 
to make your home here.” 

“Couldn’t I be your son—and make my home 
somewhere else?” 

“I don’t see how that would help.” 

“It might help me.” 

The large gray eyes stole round toward him. “Do 
you mean that you wouldn't want to live with us ?” 

“I mean that I’m not used to your way of living.” 

“Oh, well!” She dismissed this, continuing to 
spread her jeweled fingers to the blaze. “You said 
once—a long time ago—when I saw you in Boston— 
that you couldn’t get accustomed to another—to an- 
other mother—now—or something like that. Do you 
remember?” 

He said he remembered, but he said no more. 

“Well, what about it?” 

Since it was precisely to another mother that he 
was now making up his mind, he found the question 
difficult. “It was three years ago that I said that. 
Things change.” 

“What’s changed?” 

“Perhaps not things so much as people. I’ve 
changed myself.” 

“Changed toward us—toward me?” 

“I’ve changed toward the whole question—chiefly 
because Mr. Whitelaw’s been so kind to me.” 

“I don’t suppose his kindness makes any difference 
in the facts. If you’re our son you’re our son 
whether he’s kind to you or not.” 

“His kindness may not make any difference in the 
facts, but it does make a difference in my attitude.” 

450 




THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Mine can’t be influenced so easily.” 

Though he wondered what she meant by that he 
decided to find out indirectly. “No, I suppose not. 
After all, you’re the one to whom it’s all more vital 
than to anybody else.” 

“Because I’m the mother? I don’t see that. They 
talk about mother-instinct as if it was so sure; but—” 
She swung round on him with sudden, unexpected 
flame—“but if they’d been put to as many tests as 
I’ve been they’d find out. Why, almost any child can 
seem as if he might have been the baby you haven’t 
seen for a few years. You forget. You lose the 
power either to recognize or to be sure that you don’t 
recognize. If anyone tries hard enough to persuade 
you . . 

“Has anyone tried to persuade you—about me?” 

He began to see from whence Tad and Lily had 
drawn the stormy elements in their natures. “Not 
in so many words perhaps; but when some one very 
close to you is convinced . . 

“And you yourself not convinced . . 

She rose to her feet tragically. “How can I be 
convinced? What is there to convince me? Re¬ 
semblances—a name—a few records—a few guesses 
—a few hopes—but I don’t know. Who can prove 
a case of this kind—after nearly twenty-three years ?” 

In his eagerness to reassure her he stepped near 
to where she stood. “I hope you understand that I’m 
not trying to prove anything. I never began this.” 

“I know you didn’t. I feel as if a false position 
would be as hard on you as it would be on ourselves.” 

“Then you think the position would be a false one?” 

451 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I’m not saying so. I’m only trying to make you 
see how impossible it is for me to say I’m sure you’re 
my boy —when I don't know. I’m not a cold-hearted 
woman. I’m only a tried and frightened one.” 

“Would it be of any help if I were to withdraw?” 

“It wouldn’t be of help to my husband.” 

“Oh, I see! We must consider him.” 

“I don’t see that you need consider anyone but 
yourself. We’ve dragged you into this. You’ve a 
right to do exactly as you please.” 

“Oh, if I were to do that . . .” 

“What I don’t want you to do is to misjudge me. 
Not that it would matter whether you misjudged me 
or not, unless—later—we were compelled to see our¬ 
selves as—as son and mother.” 

“I shouldn’t like to have either of us do that— 
under compulsion.” 

Restlessly, rapidly, she began to move about, touch¬ 
ing now this object and now that. Her hands were as 
active as if they had an independent life. They were 
more expressive than her tone when they tossed them¬ 
selves wildly apart, as she cried: 

“What else could it be for me—but compulsion?” 
He was about to speak, but she stopped him. “Do 
me justice. Put yourself in my place. My boy would 
now be twenty-four. They bring me a man who 
looks like thirty. Yes, yes; I daresay you’re not 
thirty, but you look like it. It’s just as hard for me 
as if you were thirty. I’m only forty-four myself. 
They want me to think that this man—so big—so 
grave—so old —is my little boy. How can I? He 

452 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


may be. I don’t deny that. But for me to think 
it I” 

He watched her as she moved from table to table, 
from chair to chair, her eyes on him reproachfully, 
her hands like things in agony. 

"It’s as hard for me to think it as it is for you.” 

The words arrested her. Her frenzied motions 
ceased. Only her eyes kept themselves on him, with 
their sorrowful, fixed stare. 

"What do you mean by that?” 

He tried to explain. "My only conception of a 
mother is of some one poor—and hard-worked—and 
knocked about—and loving—and driven from pillar 
to post—whereas you’re so beautiful—and young— 
young almost—and—and expensive—and—” A flip 
of his hand included the room—"with all this as your 
setting—and everything else—I can’t credit it.” 

She came up to him excitedly. "Well, then— 
what ?” 

"The only thing we can do, it seems to me, is to 
try to make it easier for each other. May I ask one 
question?” 

She nodded, mutely. 

"Would you rather that your little boy was found? 
—or that he wasn’t found?” 

She wheeled away, speaking only after a minute’s 
thought, and from the other side of the room. "I’d 
rather that he was found—of course—if I could be 
sure that he was found.” 

"How would you know when you were sure?” 

She tapped her heart. "I ought to know it here.” 

"That’s the way I’d know it too.” 

453 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


“And you don't ?” 

In a long silence he looked at her. She looked at 
him. Each strove after the mystery which warps the 
child to the mother, the mother to the child. Where 
was it? What was it? How could you tell it when 
you saw it? And if you saw it, could you miss it 
and pass it by ? He sought it in her eyes; she sought 
it in his. They sought it by all the avenues of in¬ 
tuitive, spiritual sight. 

She tapped her heart again. Her utterance was 
imperious, insistent, and yet soft. 

“And you don’t —feel it there?” 

He too spoke softly. “No, I don’t.” 

In reluctant dismissal he turned away from her. 
With her quick little gasp of a sob she turned away 
from him. 


\ 


454 


XLV 


PO Tom Whitelaw this was the conclusion of the 
“** whole matter. A son must have a mother as 
well as a father. If there was no mother there was 
no son. The inference brought him a relief in which 
there were two strains of regret. 

He would be farther away from Hildred. They 
would have more trials to meet, more bridges to cross. 
Very well! He was not accustomed to having things 
made easy. For whatever he possessed, which was 
not much, he had longed and worked and worked and 
longed till he got it. But he got it in the end. In 
the end he would get Hildred. Better win her so 
than to have her drop as a present in his arms. If 
not wholly content, he was sure. 

In the matter of his second regret he was only 
sorry. It began to grow clear to him that a father 
needs a son more than a son needs a father. Of this 
kind of need he himself knew nothing. He was what 
he was, detached, independent, assured. He never 
asked for sympathy, and if he craved for love, he had 
learned to stifle the craving, or direct it into the one 
narrow channel which flowed toward Hildred. The 
paternal and filial instinct, having had no function in 
his life, seemed to have shriveled up. 

But the instinct of response to the slightest move¬ 
ment of goodwill, to the faintest plea for help, was 

455 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


active with daily use. It leaped forth eagerly; if it 
couldn’t leap forth something within him fretted and 
cried like a hound when the scent leads to earth. As 
Paul the Apostle, he could be all things to all men, if 
by any means he might help some. If Henry White- 
law needed a son, he could be a son to him. The tie 
of blood was in no small measure a matter of indiffer¬ 
ence. Plis impulse was like Honey’s “next o’ kin.” 
He remembered, as he had learned in school, that kin 
and kind were words with a common origin. White- 
law’s truest kinship with himself was in his kindness. 
His kinship with Whitelaw could as truly be in his 
devotion. Devotion was what he could offer most 
spontaneously. 

If only that could satisfy the father yearning for 
his son! It could do it up to a point, since the banker 
identified kindness and kinship much as he did him¬ 
self. But beyond that point there was the cry of the 
middle-aged man for some one who was part of him¬ 
self on whom he could lean now that his strength 
was beginning to decline. That his two acknowledged 
children were nothing but a care sent him groping all 
the more eagerly for the son who might be a support 
to him. The son who was not a son might be better 
than no one, as he himself confessed; and yet nothing 
on earth could satisfy his empty soul but his own son . 
Not to be that son made Tom sorry; but without a 
mother, how could he be? 

Otherwise, to remain as what life had made him 
was unalloyed relief. He was himself. In his own 
phrase, he was more himself than most men. But 
to enter the Whitelaw family, and belong to it, would 

456 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


turn him into some one else. He might have a right 
there; an accident such as happens every day might 
easily make him the head of it ; and yet he would 
have to put forth affections and develop points of 
view which could only come from a man with another 
kind of past. To be the son of that mother, and the 
brother of that sister, sorry for them as he was, would 
mean the kind of metamorphosis, the change in the 
whole nature, of which he had read in ancient myth¬ 
ology. He would make the attempt if he was called 
to it; but he shrank from the call. 

Nevertheless, he took up his job as assistant to the 
great man’s confidential secretary. This was a Mr. 
Phips whom Tom didn’t like, but with whom he got 
on easily. He easily got on with him because Mr. 
Phips himself made a point of it. 

A rubicund, smiling man, he had to be seen twice 
before you gave him credit for his unctuous ability. 
There was in him that mingling of honesty and craft 
which go to make the henchman, and sometimes the 
ecclesiastic. While he couldn’t originate anything, he 
could be an instrument accurate and sharp. Always 
ready to act boldly, it was with a boldness of which 
some one else must assume the responsibility. He 
could be the power behind the throne, but never the 
power sitting on it publicly. With an almost tele¬ 
pathic gift for reading Whitelaw's mind, he could 
carry out its wishes before they were expressed. 
From sheer induction he could, in a secondary way, 
direct affairs from which he never took a penny of 
the profits over and above his salary. 

Again like the ecclesiastic and the henchman, he 

457 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


had neither will nor conscience beyond the cause he 
served. A born factotum, with no office but to carry 
out, he accepted Tom without questioning. Without 
questioning he set him to those duties which, as a 
beginner, would be within his grasp. He didn’t need 
to be told that when a message or a document was to 
be sent to the most private of all offices, it should be 
through the person of this particular young man. 
Without having invented for Tom the soubriquet of 
the Whitelaw Baby, he didn’t frown at it on hearing 
it pass round the office, as it did within a few days. 

Tom found Whitelaw welcoming, considerate, but 
at first a little distant. He might have been conscious 
of the anomalies in the situation; he might have been 
anxious not to rush things; he might even have been 
shy. Except to ask him, toward the end of each day, 
how he was getting along, he didn’t speak to him 
alone. 

Then, on the fourth morning, Whitelaw sent for 
him. As Tom entered he was standing up, a packet 
in his hand. 

“I want you to take a taxi and go up to my house. 
Ask for my wife, and give her this.” He made the 
nature of the errand clearer. “It’s the anniversary 
of our wedding. She thinks I’ve forgotten it. I’ve 
only been waiting to send this—by you.” 

The significance of the mission came to Tom while 
he was on the way. The thing in the packet, probably 
a jewel, was the token of a marriage of which he 
was the eldest born. It was to mark his position in 
the husband’s mind that he was made the bearer of 
the gift. He had no opinion as to this, except that 

458 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

in the appeal to the wife there was an element of 
futility. 

In the big dim hall he met the second born. To 
answer the door Dadd had left the task of helping 
the one-armed fellow into his spring overcoat. As 
Tom came in the poor left arm was struggling with 
the garment viciously. Tad broke into a greeting 
vigorous, but noncommittal. 

“Hello, by Gad!” 

Tom went straight to his business. “Your father 
has sent me with a message to Mrs. Whitelaw. I 
understand she’s at home.” 

“So you’ve got here! I knew you’d work it some 
day.” 

“You were very perspicacious.” 

“I was. And there’s another thing I’ll tell you. 
You’ve got round the old man. Well, I’m not going 
to stand for it. See?” 

“I see; but it’s got nothing to do with me. Your 
father’s given me a job. If you don’t want him to do 
it you ought to tackle him.” 

Whatever war had done for Tad it had not en¬ 
nobled him. The face was old and seamed and 
stained with a dark red flush. It was scowling too, 
with the helpless scowl of impotence. Tom was 
sorrier for him than he had ever been before. 

Having taken his hat and stick, Tad strode off, 
turning only on the doorstep. “But there’s one thing 
I’ll say right now. If you’ve got a job at Meek and 
Brokenshire’s I’ll damn well have a better one. I’m 
going to keep my eye on you.” 

Tom laughed, good-naturedly. “That’s the very 

459 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


best thing you could do. Nothing would please your 
father half so well. You’d buck him up, and at the 
same time get your knife into me.” 

As the door closed behind Tad Miss Nash came 
forward from somewhere in the obscurity. She was 
in that tremulous ecstasy which the mere sight of 
Tom always roused in her. She was so very sorry, 
but Mrs. Whitelaw wasn’t able to receive him. If 
Tom would leave his package with her she would see 
that it was delivered. 

On the next afternoon as Tom was leaving the 
office Whitelaw offered him a lift uptown. In the 
seclusion of the limousine the father spoke of Tad. 

“He’s a great care to me, but somehow I feel that 
you might do him good.” 

“He wouldn’t let me. I can’t get near him, except 
by force.” 

“But force is what he respects. In the bottom of 
his heart he respects you.” 

“What he needs is a job—the smallest job you 
could offer him in the bank. If you could put it to 
him as a sporting proposition that he was to get ahead 
of me . . .” 

“That’s what I’ll try to do.” 

In the course of a few days the lift uptown had 
become a custom. Though he had never received 
instructions to that effect, Mr. Phips so shaped Tom’s 
duties that he found himself leaving the office at the 
same moment as the banker. Once or twice when 
things did not so happen Whitelaw came into the 
room where Tom was at work to look for him. If 

460 



THE HAPPY ISLES 


no one else saw it Mr. Phips did, that the lift uptown 
was the big minute of the banker’s day. 

“I’ve got a son,” the secretary pondered to him¬ 
self, “but I’ll be hanged if I feel about him like that. 
I suppose it’s because I never lost him.” 

“Tad’s applied to me for a job,” the father in¬ 
formed Tom in the limousine one day. “The next 
thing will be to make him stick to it.” 

“I believe I could manage that, once we get him 
there,” Tom said confidently. “I can’t always make 
him drink, but I can hold his head to the water. I 
did that at college more than once.” 

“I know you did. I can’t tell you . . .” 

A tremor of the voice cut short this sentence, but 
Tom knew what would have been said: “I can’t tell 
you what it means to me now to have some one to 
fall back upon. The children have given me a good 
deal of worry which their mother couldn’t share be¬ 
cause of her unhappiness. But now—I've got you.” 
Tom was glad, however, that it had not been put into 
words. 


XLVI 


HP HEY came into May, the joyous, exciting, stimu- 
lating May of New York, with its laughing 
promise of adventure. To Tom Whitelaw that sense 
of adventure was in the happy sunlight, in the blue 
sky, in the scudding clouds, in winds that were warm 
and yet with the tang of salt and ice in them, in the 
flowers in the Park, in the gay dresses in the Avenue, 
in the tall young men already beginning to look sum¬ 
mery, in the shop windows with their flowers, fruit, 
jewels, porcelains, and brocades, in the opulent crush 
of vehicles, and in his own heart most of all. Never 
before had he known such ecstasy of life. It was 
more than vigor of limb or the strong coursing of the 
blood. It was youth and love and expectation, with 
their call to the daring, the reckless, and the new. 

They reached a Saturday. Business was taking 
Whitelaw to Boston. Tom went with him to the sta¬ 
tion, to carry his brief-case, to hand him his ticket, 
to check his bags, and perform the other small services 
of a clerk for the man of importance. 

“I shall come back on Wednesday,” the banker 
explained to him, before entering the train. “On 
Thursday I shall not be at the office. It’s a day on 
which I never leave my wife. Though I often have 
to go abroad and leave her behind, I always manage 
it so that we may have that particular day together. 
I shall see you then on Friday.” 

462 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


He saw him, however, on Thursday, since Mr. 
Phips willed it so. At least, it was Mr. Phips who 
willed it, as far as Tom ever knew. About three on 
that day he came to Tom with a brief-case stuffed 
with documents. 

“The Chief may want to run his eyes over these 
before he comes to the office to-morrow. Ask for 
himself. Don’t leave them with anybody else.” 

To the best of Tom’s belief there was no staging 
of what happened next beyond that which was set by 
Phips’s intuitions. 

By the time he rang at the house in Fifth Avenue 
it was a little after four. Admitted to the big dim 
hall, he heard a hum of voices coming from the sitting 
room. In Dadd’s manner there was some constraint. 

“Will you step in here, sir, and I’ll tell the master 
that you’ve come?” 

The library was on the same side of the house as 
the dining room, but it got the afternoon sun. The 
sun woke its colors to a burnished softness in which 
red and blue and green and gold melted into each other 
lovingly. A still, well-ordered room, little used by 
anyone, it gave the impression of a place of rest for 
ancient beauty and high thought. Rich and repose¬ 
ful, there was nothing in it that was not a masterpiece, 
but a masterpiece which there was no one but some 
chance visitor to care anything about. In the four 
who made up the Whitelaw family there were too 
many aching human cares for knowledge or art to 
comfort. 

Tom’s eyes studied absently the profile of a woman 
on an easel. She might have been a Botticelli; he 

463 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


didn’t know. She only reminded him of Hildred—- 
neatly piled dark hair, long slanting eyes, a small 
snub nose, and lips deliciously moqueur. The colors 
she wore were also Hildred’s, subdued and yet ardent, 
umber round the shoulders, with a chain of emeralds 
that almost sparkled in the westering light. 

Whitelaw entered with his quick and eager tread, 
his quick and eager seizing of the young man’s hand. 
Again the left hand rested on his shoulder; again 
there was the deep and earnest searching of the eyes, 
as if a lost secret had not yet been found; again there 
was the little weary push. 

“Come.” 

Taking the brief-case into his own hands, he left 
Tom nothing to do but follow him. Diagonally cross¬ 
ing the hall, Tom noticed that the hum of voices had 
died down. Without knowing why he nerved himself 
for a test. 

The test came at once. Whitelaw, having preceded 
him into the room, had carried his brief-case to a table, 
and at once went to work on the contents. Perhaps 
he did this purposely, to throw Tom on his own re¬ 
sources. In any case, it was on his own resources that 
he felt himself thrown the instant he appeared on the 
threshold. He judged from the face of anguish and 
protest which Mrs. Whitelaw turned on him that he 
was not expected. Dimly he perceived that Tad and 
Lily were in the room, and some one else whom as yet 
he hadn’t time to see. All his powers were focused 
on the meeting of the woman who was not his mother, 
and didn’t want him there. 

He thought quickly. He would be on the safest 

464 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


side. He had come there as a clerk; as a clerk shown 
in among the family he would conduct himself. Pie 
bowed to Mrs. Whitelaw, who let him take her hand, 
though that too seemed to suffer at his touch; he 
bowed to Lily; he nodded respectfully to Tad. He 
turned to salute distantly the other person in the room, 
and found her coming towards him. 

He knew her free swinging motion before he had 
time to see her face. 

“Oh, Tom!” 

“Why, Hildred!” 

Her manner was the protecting one he had often 
seen in other years, when she thought he might be 
hurt, or be ignorant of small usages. She was subtle, 
tactful, and ready, all at once. 

“Come over here.” She drew him to a seat on a 
sofa, beside herself. “Mrs. Whitelaw won’t mind, 
will you, Mrs. Whitelaw? You know, Tom and I 
are the greatest friends—have been for years.” 

He forgot everyone else who was present in the joy 
and surprise of seeing her. “When did you come? 
Why didn’t you let me know?” 

“I didn’t know myself till late last night, did I, Mrs. 
Whitelaw? Mrs. Whitelaw only wired to invite me 
after Mr. Whitelaw came back from Boston. Of 
course I wasn’t going to miss a chance like that. I 
don’t see New York oftener than once in two years or 
so. Then there was the chance of seeing you. I was 
ready in an hour. I took the ten o’clock train this 
morning, and have just this minute arrived.” 

Only when these first few bits of information had 
been given and received did Tom feel the return of his 

465 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


embarrassment. He was in a room where three of 
the five others were troubled by his presence. He 
wasn’t there of his own free will, and since he was a 
clerk he couldn’t leave till he was dismissed. He 
would not have known what to do if Hildred hadn’t 
kept a small conversation going, drawing into it first 
one and then another, till presently all were discussing 
the weather or something of equal importance. In 
spite of her emotion Mrs. Whitelaw did her best to 
sustain her role of hostess, Tad and Lily speaking only 
when they were spoken to. At a given minute Tad 
got up, sauntering toward the door. 

He was stopped by his father. “Don’t go, Tad. 
Tea will be here in a minute.” The voice grew 
pleading. “Stay with us to-day.” 

Lighting a cigarette, Tad sank back into his chair, 
doing it rather sulkily. Whitelaw continued to draw 
papers from the brief-case, arranging them before him 
on the table. 

When Dadd appeared with the tea-tray Tom made 
a push for escape. “If you’ve nothing else for me to 
do, sir . . .” 

Whitelaw merely glanced up at him. “Wait a 
minute. Sit down again.” 

Tom went back to his seat beside Hildred, where 
he watched Mrs. Whitelaw as she poured the tea. 
It was the first time he had seen her in indoor dress, 
all lace and soft lavender, her pearls twisted once 
around her neck and descending to her waist, a great 
jewel on her breast. It was the first time, too, that 
he had seen her hair, which was fair and crinkly, 
like his own. Except for a slight portliness, she was 

466 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


too young to seem like the mother of Lily and Tad, 
while she was still less like his. That she should be 
his mother, this woman who had never known any¬ 
thing but what love and money could enrich her with, 
was too incongruous with everything else in life to 
call for so much as denial. 

And as for the hundredth time he was saying this 
to himself Whitelaw spoke. He spoke without look¬ 
ing up from his papers except to take a sip of tea from 
the cup on the table beside him. He spoke casually, 
too, as if broaching something not of much impor¬ 
tance. 

“Now that we’re all here I think that perhaps it’s as 
good a time as any to go over the matter we’ve talked 
about separately—and settle it.” 

There was no one in the room who didn’t know 
what he meant. Tad smoked listlessly; Lily set down 
her cup and lighted a cigarette; Mrs. Whitelaw’s 
jeweled fingers played among the tea-things, as if she 
must find something for her hands to do or shriek 
aloud. Tom’s heart seemed turned to stone, to have 
no power of emotion. Hildred was the only one who 
said anything. 

“Hadn’t I better go, Mr. Whitelaw? I haven’t 
been up to my room yet.” 

“No, Hildred. I’d rather that you stayed, if you 
don’t mind. It’s the reason we’ve asked you to 
come.” 

He looked at no one. His face was a little white, 
though he was master of himself. 

“This is the tenth of May. It’s twenty-three years 
ago to-day since we lost our little boy. I want to ask 

467 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


the family, now that we’re all together, what they 
think of the chances of our having found him again.” 

Though he knew it was an anniversary in the 
family, it was Toni's first recollection of the date. In 
as far as it was his birthday, birthdays had been mean¬ 
ingless to him, except as he remembered that they had 
come and gone, and made him a year older. 

“Personally,” Whitelaw went on, “I’ve fought this 
off so long that I can’t do it any longer. It will be 
five years this summer since I first saw him, at Dub¬ 
lin, New Hampshire, and was struck with his looks 
and his name, as well as with the little I learned of his 
history.” 

“Why didn’t you do something about it then,” Tad 
put in, peevishly, “if you were going to do anything 
at all?” 

“You’re quite right, Tad. It’s what I should have 
done. I was dissuaded by the rest of you. I must 
confess, too, that I was afraid to take it up myself. 
We’d followed so many clues that led to nothing! 
But perhaps it’s just as well, as it’s given me time to 
make all the investigation that, it seems to me, has 
been possible.” 

Apart from the motion of Tad’s and Lily’s hands 
as they put their cigarettes to their lips, everyone sat 
motionless and tense. Even Mrs. Whitelaw tamed 
her feverish activity to a more feverish stillness. 
Hildred put her hand lightly on Tom’s sleeve to 
remind him that she w r as there, but the power of feel¬ 
ing anything had gone out of him. While Whitelaw 
told his facts he listened as if the case had nothing to 
do with himself. 


468 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


His agents, so the banker said, had probably un¬ 
earthed every detail in the story that was now to be 
known. 

On August 5, 1895, Thomas Coburn had been 
married in The Bronx, to Lucy Speight. Coburn 
was a carpenter who had fallen from a roof in the 
following October, and had died a few days later of 
his injuries. Their child, Grace Coburn, had been 
born in The Bronx on March 5, 1896, and had died 
on April 21, 1897. After that all trace of the mother 
had been lost, though a woman who killed herself 
by poisoning in the Female House of Detention in 
the suburb of New Rotterdam, after having been 
arrested for shop-lifting, on December 24, 1904, 
might be considered as the same person. This woman 
had been known to such neighbors as could remember 
her as Mrs. Lucy Coburn, though at the time of her 
arrest she had claimed to be the widow of Theodore 
Whitelaw, after having married Thomas Coburn as 
her first husband. The wardress who had talked to 
her on taking her to a cell recalled that she had been 
incoherent and contradictory in all her statements 
about herself, her husband, and her child. 

As a matter of fact, the early history of Lucy 
Speight had been traced. She was the daughter of 
a laboring man at Chatham, in the neighborhood 
of Albany. Her mental inheritance had been poor. 
Her father had been the victim of drink, her mother 
had died insane. One of her sisters had died insane, 
and a brother had been put at an early age in a home 
for the feeble-minded. A brother and two sisters still 
lived either at Chatham or at Pittsfield. He had in his 

469 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


hand photographs of all the living members of the 
family, and copies of photographs of those deceased, 
including two of Lucy Speight as she was as a young 
girl. 

He turned toward Tom. “Would you like to look 
at them?” 

The power of emotion came back to him with a 
rush. He remembered his mother, vividly in two or 
three attitudes or incidents, but otherwise faintly. 
A flush that stained his cheek with the same dark red 
which dissipation stamped on Tad’s made the brothers 
look more than ever alike as he crossed the room to 
take the pictures from his father’s hand. 

There were a dozen or fourteen of them, all of poor 
rustic boys and girls, or men and women, feebleness 
in the cast of their faces, the hang of their lips, the 
vacancy of their eyes. Standing to sort them out, he 
put aside quickly the two of Lucy Speight. One of 
them must have dated from 1894, or thereabouts, 
because of the big sleeves; the other, with skin-tight 
shoulders, was that of a girl perhaps in 1889. In 
their faded simper there was almost nothing of the 
wild dark prettiness with which he saw her in memory, 
and yet he could recreate it. 

He stood and gazed long, all eyes fixed on him. 
Moving to the table where Mrs. Whitelaw sat behind 
the tray, he held the two pictures before her. 

“That’s my mother.” 

Though he said this without thought of its sig¬ 
nificance, and only from the habit of thinking of Lucy 
Speight as really his mother, he saw her shrink. With 
a glance at the photographs, she glanced up at him, 

470 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


piteously, begging to be spared. Even such contact 
as this, remote, pictorial only, with people of a world 
she had never so much as touched, hurt her fastidi¬ 
ousness. That the son of this poor half-witted crea¬ 
ture, this Lucy Speight, should also be her son . . . 
but the only protest she could make was in her eyes. 

Tom did not sit down again as Whitelaw continued 
with his facts; he stood at the end of the mantelpiece, 
with its candelabra in biscuit de Semes. Leaning 
with his elbow on the white marble edge, he had all 
the others facing him, as all the others had him. 
The attitude seemed best to accord with the position 
in which he felt himself, that of a prisoner at the 
bar. 

“We’ve found no record in any State in the 
Union,” Whitelaw went on, “or in any Province in 
Canada, of a marriage between a Theodore Whitelaw 
and a Lucy Coburn or Speight. The search has been 
pretty thorough. Moreover, we find no birth recorded 
in The Bronx of any Thomas Whitelaw during all 
the decade between 1890 and 1900. No such birth is 
recorded in any other suburb of New York, or in 
Manhattan. In years past Eve been on the track of 
three men of the name of Theodore Whitelaw, one in 
Portland, Maine, one in New Orleans, and one in 
Vancouver; but there’s reason for thinking that all 
three were one and the same man. He was a Scotch 
sailor, who died on the Pacific coast, and was never 
known to be in or about New York longer than the 
two or three days in which his ship was in port.” 

He came to the circumstances, largely gathered 
from Tom himself, of the association of the woman 

47i 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


with the child. She had harped on the statements, 
first, that she had not stolen him; secondly, that he 
was not to think that his name was Whitelaw. And 
yet on the night before her death she had not only 
given him that very name, but claimed it as legally 
her own. The boy—the man, as he was now—could 
remember that at different times she had called her¬ 
self by different names, chiefly to escape detection for 
her thefts; but never before that night had she taken 
that of Whitelaw. 

Those who had worked on the case, the most skilful 
investigators in the country, were driven to a theory. 
It was a theory based only on the circumstantial, but 
so broadly based that the one unproven point, that 
which absolutely showed identity, seemed to prove 
itself. 

Lucy Coburn, feeble in mind from birth, half de¬ 
mented by the death first of her husband and then 
of her child, had prowled about the Park, looking 
for a baby that would satisfy her thwarted mother- 
love. Any baby would have done this, though she 
preferred a girl. 

“My son, Henry Elphinstone Whitelaw, was born 
on September 24, 1896. He was eight months old 
when on May 10, 1897, he was wheeled into the Park 
by Miss Nash, who is still with us. What happened 
after, as she supposed, she wheeled him back, we all 
know about.” 

But the theory was that, at some minute when Miss 
Nash’s attention was diverted, the prowling woman 
got possession of the child, through means which 
were still a matter of speculation. She had money, 

472 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


since it was known that five thousand dollars had been 
paid to her by a life-insurance company on her 
husband’s death, and, therefore, the power of flitting 
about, and covering up her traces. Discovering that 
she had a boy and not a girl, she had given him the 
first name she could think of, which was that of her 
late husband. She could easily have learned from the 
papers that the child she had stolen was the son of 
Henry Theodore Whitelaw, though the full name may 
or may not have remained in a memory probably not 
retentive at its best. But on the night of her arrest, 
knowing that she was about to forsake the child for 
whom she had come to feel a passionate affection, she 
had made one last wild effort to connect him with his 
true inheritance. Why she had done this but partially 
was again a matter of conjecture. She may have 
given all of the name she remembered; she may have 
been kept from giving the full name through fear. 
It was impossible to tell. But she gave the name— 
with some errors, it was true—but still the name. 
The name taken with the extraordinary family re¬ 
semblance—everyone would admit that—was one of 
the main points in the reconstruction of the history. 

He reviewed a few more of the proofs and the 
half-proofs, asking at last, timidly, and as if afraid 
of the family verdict: 

“Well, what does everyone say?” 

The silence was oppressive. The only movement 
on anyone’s part came when Lily stretched out her 
hand to a tray and with her little finger knocked off 
the ash from her cigarette. It seemed to Tom as if 

473 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


none of them would speak, as if he himself must 
speak first. 

“I vote we take him in.” This was Tad. “Since 
we all know you want him, father—well, that settles 
it. As far as I’m concerned I’ll—I’ll crawl down.” 

Lily shrugged her slim shoulders. “I don’t care 
one way or another. I’ve got my own affairs to 
think of. If he doesn’t interfere with me I won’t 
interfere with him.” Again she knocked off the ash 
of her cigarette. “Have him, if you want to.” 

It was Mrs. Whitelaw’s turn. She sat still, pen¬ 
sive. The clock could be heard ticking. Her husband 
gazed at her as if his life would depend on what she 
had to say. Tom himself went numb again. She 
spoke at last. 

“If you’re satisfied, Henry, I’m satisfied. All I 
ask in the world is that you—” she gasped her little 
sob—“is that you shall be happy.” Rising she walked 
straight up to Tom. “I want to kiss you.” 

When he had bent his head she kissed him on the 
forehead, formally, sacramentally. She went back 
to her seat. 

Without moving from his place at the table, White- 
law smiled across the room at Tom, a smile of relief 
and tenderness. 

“Well, what do you say?” 

Tom looked down at Hildred, noting her strange 
expression. It was not a satisfied expression; rather 
it was challenging, defiant of something, he didn’t 
know of what. But he couldn’t now consider Hil¬ 
dred; he couldn’t consider anyone but himself. He 
did not change his position, leaning on the white 

474 


THE HAPPY ISLES 

marble mantelpiece; nor was his tone other than con¬ 
versational. 

“Em awfully sorry, sir—I’m sorry to say it to you 
especially—but it’s—it’s not good enough.” 

With the slightest possible movement of the head 
Hildred made him a sign of proud approval. White- 
law’s smile went out. 

“What’s not good enough?” 

“The—the welcome—home.” 

Tad spluttered, indignantly. “What the devil do 
you want? Do you expect us to put up an arch?” 

“No; I don’t expect anything. I should only like 
you to understand that though it isn’t easy for you, 
it’s easier for you than for me.” 

Tad turned to his father. “Now you’re getting 
it! I could have told you beforehand, if you’d con¬ 
sulted me.” 

“You see,” Tom continued, paying no attention to 
the interruption, “you’re all different from me. 
You’re used to different things, to different standards 
and ways of thinking. If I were to come in among 
you the only phrase that would describe me is the 
homely one of the fish out of water. I should be gasp¬ 
ing for breath. I couldn’t live in your atmosphere.” 

Tad was again the only one to voice a comment. 
“Well, I’ll be damned!” 

Tom’s legs which had quaked at first, began to be 
surer under him. “Please don’t think I’m venturing 
to criticize anyone or anything. This is your life, and 
it suits you. It wouldn’t suit me because it isn’t 
mine. The past makes me as it makes you, and it’s 
too late now to unmake us. It’s possible that I may 

475 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


be Harry Whitelaw. When I hear the evidence that 
can be produced I can almost think I am. But if I 
am Harry Whitelaw by birth, Pm not Harry White- 
law by life and experience. I can’t go back and be 
made over. I’m myself as I stand.” Still having 
in his hand the pictures of Lucy Speight, he held 
them out. “To all intents and purposes this is—my 
mother.” 

“And I kissed you!” 

Tom smiled. “Yes, but you don’t know how she 
kissed me. I do. She loved me. I loved her. I’ve 
tried—I’ve tried my very best—to turn my back on 
her—to call her a thief—and any other name that 
would blacken her—and—and I can’t do it.” 

The sleeping lioness in the mother was roused sud¬ 
denly. Leaving her place behind the tea-table, she 
advanced near enough to him to point to the two 
photographs. 

“Do you mean to say that—having the choice be¬ 
tween—that—and me—you choose—that?” 

“I don’t choose. I can’t do anything else. It isn’t 
what you think that rules your life; it’s what you love. 
I’m one of the people to whom love means more than 
anything else. I daresay it’s a weakness—especially 
in a man—but that’s the way it is.” 

“If your first stipulation is love . . 

“Wouldn’t it be yours, Onora?” 

“I’d try to be reasonable—when so many con¬ 
cessions have been made.” 

“Yes,” Tom hastened to say, “but that’s just my 
point. I’m not asking for concessions. The minute 

476 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


they must be made—well, I’m not there. I couldn’t 
come into your family—on concessions.” 

Whitelaw spoke up again. “I don’t blame you.” 

Tom tried to make his position clearer. “It’s a 
little like this. A long time ago I was coming along 
by the Hudson in the train. I was on my way to New 
York with the man who had adopted me, after I’d 
been a State ward. There was a steamer on the river, 
and I watched her—coming from I didn’t know where 
—going to I didn’t know where. And it came to me 
then that she was something like myself. I didn’t 
know what port I’d sailed from; nor what port I was 
making for. But now that I’m twenty-three—if 
that’s my age—I see this: that once in so often I 
touched at some happy isle, where the people took me 
in and were good to me. It was what carried me 
along.” 

The mother broke in, reproachfully. “Happy isles 
—full of convicts and murderers!” 

“Yes; but they were happy. The convicts and 
murderers were kind. A homeless boy doesn’t ques¬ 
tion the moral righteousness of the people who give 
him food and shelter and clothes, and, what’s more, 
all their best affection. What it comes to is this, that 
having lived in those happy isles—awhile in one, 
awhile in another—I don’t want to go ashore at an 
unhappy one, even though I was born there.” 

Springing to his feet, Tad bore down on him. 
“Do you know what I call you? I call you an ass.” 

“Very likely. I’m only trying to explain to you 
why I can’t be your brother—even if I am—your 
brother.” 


477 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“It’s because you don’t want to be—and you damn 
well know it.” 

“That may be another way of putting it; but I’m 
not putting it that way.” 

Lily rose languidly, throwing out her words to no¬ 
body in particular. “I think he’s a good sport, if you 
ask me. I wouldn’t come into a family like us—not 
the way we are.” 

“Wait, Lily,” Whitelaw cried, as she was saunter¬ 
ing out. He too got to his feet. “You’ve all spoken. 
You’ve done the best you could. I’m not blaming 
anyone. Now I want you all to understand—” He 
indicated Tom—“ that this is my son. I know he’s 
my son. I claim him as my son. Not even what he 
says himself can make any difference to me.” 

Tom strode across the room, grasping the other’s 
hand. “Yes, sir; and you’re my father. I know 
that too, and I claim you on my side. But we’ll stop 
right there. It’s as far as we can go. I’ll be your 
son in every sense but that of—” He looked round 
about on them all—“but that of being your heir or 
a member of your family. I can’t do that; but—be¬ 
tween you and me—everything is understood.” 

He got out of the room with dignity. Passing Tad, 
he nodded, and said, “Thanks!” To Lily he said, 
“Thank you too. It was bully, what you said.” 
Reaching the mother whom he didn’t know and who 
didn’t know him, he bowed low. Sitting again behind 
the tea-table, she lifted her hand for him to take it. 
He took it and kissed it. Her little soblike gasp fol¬ 
lowed him as he passed into the big dim hall. 

He had taken no leave of Hildred, because he knew 

478 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


she would do what actually she did; but he didn’t 
know that she would speak the words he heard spoken. 

“I’m going with him, dear Mrs. Whitelaw; but I 
shan’t be long. I just don’t want him to go away 
alone because—because I mean to marry him.” 


479 


XL VII 


A S they went down the steps she took his arm. 
1\. “Tom, darling, I’m proud of you. Now they 
know where we stand, both of us.” 

“It was splendid of you, Hildred, to play up like 
that. It backs me tremendously that you’re not afraid 
to own me. But, you know, what I’ve just said will 
put us farther apart.” 

“Oh, I don’t know about that. Father said we 
couldn’t be engaged unless you were acknowledged as 
Mr. Whitelaw’s son; and you have been. He never 
said anything about your being Mrs. Whitelaw’s son. 
This is a case in which it’s the father that counts 
specially.” 

“But I couldn’t take any of his money beyond what 
I earned.” 

“Oh, but that wouldn’t make any difference.” 

They crossed the Avenue and entered the Park. 
They entered the Park because it was the obvious 
place in which to look for a little privacy. All the gay 
sweet life of the May afternoon was at its brightest. 
Riders were cantering up and down the bridle-path; 
friends were strolling; children were playing; birds 
were flying with bits of string or straw for the build¬ 
ing of their nests. To Tom and Hildred the gladness 
was thrown out by the deeper gladness in themselves. 

“But you don’t know how poor we’ll be.” 

480 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“Oh, don’t I ? Where do you think I keep my eyes ? 
Why, I expect to be poor when I marry—for a while 
at any rate. I expect to do my own housework, like 
most of the young married women I know.” 

“Oh, but you’ve always talked so much about 
servants.” 

“Yes, dear Tom, but that was to be on a desert 
island where we were to be all alone. We shan’t 
find that island except in our hearts.” 

“But even without the island, I always supposed 
that when a girl like you got married she . . .” 

“She began with an establishment on the scale of 
ours in Louisburg Square, at the least. Yes, that 
used to be the way, twenty or thirty years ago. But 
I’m sorry to say it isn’t so any longer. Talk about 
revolution! We’ve got revolution as it is. With 
rents and wages as they are, and all the other ex¬ 
penses, why, a young couple must begin with the 
simple life, or stay single. I’d rather begin with the 
simple life, and I know more about it than you think.” 

He laughed. “So I see.” 

“Oh, I can cook and sew and make beds and wash 
dishes. . . .” 

They sauntered on, without noticing where they 
were going, till they came to a dell, where in the shade 
of an elm there was a seat, and another near a heart- 
shaped clump of lilacs, all in bloom. They sat in the 
shade of the elm. They were practical young lovers, 
and yet they were young lovers. They were lovers 
for whom there had never been any lovers but them¬ 
selves. The wonderful thing was that each felt what 
the other felt; the discoveries by which they had come 

481 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


to the knowledge of this fact were the first that had 
ever been made. 

“Oh, Tom, do you feel like that? Why, that’s 
just the way I feel.” 

“Is it, Hildred? Well, it shows we were made for 
each other, doesn’t it, because I never thought that 
anyone felt like that but me?” 

“Well, no one ever did but me. Only Tom, dear, 
tell me when it was that you first began to fall in love 
with me.” 

“It was the night—a winter’s night—five, six, seven 
years ago—when I found Guy in a mix-up with a lot 
of hoodlums in the snow.” 

“And you brought him home. That was the first 
time you ever saw me.” 

“Yes, it was the first time I ever saw you that I 
began . . 

“And I began then, too. Since that evening, there’s 
never been anybody else. Oh, Tom, was there ever 
anybody else with you?” 

Tom thought of Maisie. “Not—not really.” 

“Well, unreally then?” 

As he made his confession she listened eagerly. 
“Yes, that was unreally. And you never heard any¬ 
thing more about her?” 

“Oh, yes. When I was in Boston a few weeks ago 
I went to see her aunt. She told me that Maisie had 
been married for the last two years to a traveling 
salesman she’d been in love with for a long time, and 
that she had a baby.” 

The thought of Maisie brought back the thought of 

482 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


Honey; and the thought of Honey woke him to the 
fact that he had been on this spot before. 

“Why—why, Hildred! This is the very bench on 
which Miss Nash and the other nurse were sitting—” 

“When you were stolen?” 

“When somebody was stolen.” He looked round 
him. “And there's Miss Nash over there!” 

On the bench near the lilacs Miss Nash was seated 
with a book. 

“We ought to go and speak to her,” Hildred sug¬ 
gested. 

Miss Nash received them with her beatific look. “I 
saw you leave the house. I thought you’d come here. 
I followed you. I had something to do, something 
I swore to God I’d do the day my little boy came 
back. I’d—” She held up a novel of which the open 
pages were already yellowing—“I’d finish this. Juliet 
Allingham s Sin is the name of it. I was just at the 
scene where the lover drowns when my little boy was 
taken. I’ve never opened the book since; but I’ve kept 
it by me.” She rose, weeping. “Now I can finish it 
—but I’ll go home.” 

Sitting down on the seat she had left free for them, 
they began to talk of the scene of the afternoon, which 
as yet they had avoided. 

“I hope I didn’t hurt their feelings.” 

“They didn’t mind hurting yours.” 

“They didn’t mean to. They thought they were 
generous.” 

“Which only shows . . .” 

“But he's all right. Hildred, he’s a big man.” 

“And you really think he’s your father, Tom?” 

483 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


“I know he is. Everything makes me sure of it.” 

“Well, then, if he’s your father, she must be your 
mother.” 

“Yes, but I don’t go that far. It isn’t what must 
be that I think about; it’s what is” 

She persisted in her logic. “And Tad and Lily 
must be your brother and sister.” 

“They can be what they like. I don’t care anything 
about them.” 

“It’s only your mother that you don’t . . .” 

He got up, restlessly. It was easier to reconstruct 
the scene which Honey had described to him than to 
let her bring what she was saying too sharply to a 
point. 

“It was over here that the baby carriage stood, 
right in the heart of this little clump.” She followed 
him into it. “Miss Nash and the other nurse were 
over there, where we were sitting first. And right 
here, just where I'm standing, the queer thing must 
have happened.” 

“Are you sorry it happened, Tom?” 

“You mean, if it actually happened to me. Why, 
no; and yet—yes. I can’t tell. I’m sorry not to have 
grown up with—with my father. And yet if I had, 
I should have missed—all the other things—Honey— 
and perhaps you.” 

“Oh, you couldn’t have missed me, I couldn’t have 
missed you. We might not have met in the way we 
did meet, but we’d have met.” 

He hardly heard her last words, because he was 
staring off along the path by which they themselves 

484 


THE HAPPY ISLES 


had come down. His tone was puzzled, scarcely more 
than a whisper. 

“Hildred, look!” 

“Why, it’s Mr. and Mrs. Whitelaw. She’s changed 
her dress. How young she looks with that kind of 
flowered hat. I remember now. They always come 
here on the tenth of May. They’ve been here already 
this morning. Lily told me so. I know what it is. 
They’re looking for you. Miss Nash has told them 
where we are. I’m going to run. ,, 

“Don’t run far,” he begged of her. “I can’t 
imagine what’s up.” 

He stood where he was, watching their advance. 
It was not his place to go forward, since he wasn’t 
sure that he was wanted. He only thought he must 
be when, as they reached the bench beneath the elm, 
Whitelaw pointed him out and let his wife go on 
alone. 

She came on in the hurried way in which she did 
everything, her great eyes brimming, as they often 
were, with unshed tears. At the entrance among the 
lilacs she held out both her hands, their diamonds 
upward, as if he was to kiss them. He took the 
hands, but lightly, barely touching them, keeping on 
his guard. 

“Harry!” The staccato sentences came out as little 
breathless cries torn from a heart that tried to keep 
them back. “Harry! You—you needn’t—love me— 
or be my son—or live with us—unless—unless you 
like—but I want you to—to let me kiss you—just 
once—the way—the way your other—mother—used 
to.” THE END 

485 




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